Grant: Compensation restructuring could spur exodus of talent from exec agencies

O’NEIL GRANT, immediate past president of the Jamaica Civil Service Association (JCSA), says that there could be an exodus of talent from executive agencies to central Government, owing to the competitive rates of salaries now being paid by the latter as a result of the compensation restructuring.

The concept of executive agencies was co-opted from the United Kingdom more than two decades ago with the intent to drive efficiency in the public service among semiautonomous state bodies.

Grant is of the view that the high-demand performance outputs from highly motivated trained workers in executive agencies may begin to wane.

“In a lot of instances central administration has gone ahead of the executive agencies and the workers at the executive agencies are now saying they are looking to go back to central administration because there is no benefit that they can see being in an executive agency,” Grant told The Gleaner in an interview after stepping down as president.

WEAKNESSES

One of the weaknesses of the approach to the compensation restructuring, said Grant, was that the executive agencies were to be reviewed over several years.

He argued that the Ministry of Finance and the Public Service made an error in not allowing the executive agencies to be appropriately classified or structured before they carried out the realignment under compensation restructuring. He said that has put the executive agencies at a disadvantage.

“You have a lot of persons who want to leave the executive agencies to work for central administration because their salaries are now falling below their counterparts in the public sector,” Grant pointed out.

The former JCSA head said that when Tax Administration Jamaica (TAJ) was converted into a semiautonomous revenue authority, the workers were pleased with their salaries.

However, he said that under the compensation restructuring, the salaries in central administration caught up with the levels being paid in TAJ.

“These workers are now saying that we are not happy with how we have been treated over the years. Yes, our salaries would have gone up initially and we were happy but the premium that we were supposed to get for being the premier revenue agency of the Government, we are not feeling that treatment anymore,” Grant said of the workers.

He suggested that other agencies such as the Passport, Immigration and Citizenship Agency, and Jamaica Customs should have been treated as premier agencies with competitive salaries paid to staff.

In addition, he said that the Auditor General’s Department should have been treated in a particular way for being the watchdog organisation over the fiscal affairs of the Government.

“You would have to ensure that the premium is attached to their compensation relative to the rest of the public sector. Everybody should want to work in these agencies and then the competition would be such that they are always able to retain the best and the brightest because their compensation is at a very high level,” he added.

edmond.campbell@gleanerjm.com