By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Senior Reporter

rrolle@tribunemedia.net

THE Minnis administration, which came to power promising to right-size the civil service after the Christie administration hired scores of people, has made at least 2,402 people permanent members of the civil service and has promoted more than 1,600 people throughout government since taking office.

During his contribution to the budget debate yesterday, Public Service Minister Brensil Rolle also revealed that despite the fiscal woes caused by COVID-19, in June and July the government will retroactively pay public officers money consistent with the increments, reclassification and salary advances they did not receive last year because of the pandemic.

“We’re gonna pay them and we’re gonna make their pay retroactive to the date that they were supposed to be promoted,” he said.

Mr Rolle said of the hires under the Minnis administration, 600 were part-time workers who didn’t have status and are now fully employed. Seven hundred of them are people such as those who work in the Ministry of Education as teacher’s aides and security officers – all those persons who perform those essential services,” Mr Rolle said.

One thousand one hundred and two of them are people who were a part of the National Job Creation and Skills Enhancement Programme, also known as the 52-week programme.

Although the programme was established to provide unemployed people between 19 and 30 with hands-on skills to enhance their ability to find gainful employment, the government has decided to permanently hire the people. The programme began in 2018 and was renewed the following year.

The 1,102 people who now join the ranks of the civil service include 81 in Abaco, 31 in Acklins, 17 in Central Andros, 15 in Mangrove Cay, 87 in North Andros, 15 in South Andros, six in the Berry Islands, eight in Bimini, 27 in Cat Island, 14 in Crooked Island, 14 in Central Eleuthera, 25 in North Eleuthera, 46 in South Eleuthera, 18 in Exuma, 139 in Grand Bahama, 24 in Inagua, 38 in Long Island, 17 in Mayaguana, seven in San Salvador and 461 in New Providence.

When the Minnis administration came to office, it attacked the hiring practices of the previous Christie administration. A Department of Statistics Labour Force survey released in 2018, estimated that up to November 2017, 2,500 people were let go by the Minnis administration. Mr Rolle has previously rejected this figure and did so again yesterday.

In 2019, Mr Rolle told The Tribune that the government rehired a larger number of the people who were engaged from 2012 to 2017 and subsequently let go under the Minnis administration.

After vowing to right-size the civil service upon taking office, Mr Rolle yesterday praised the many hires of the Minnis administration, saying the hires demonstrates his government’s record for building capacity.

“It shows that we continue to invest in human beings because that’s how we build a country, that’s how countries exist,” he said.

Mr Rolle said between June 2017 and December 2020, 1,600 people have been promoted in the government system.

“We hired hundreds of individuals, now we are promoting them in the system,” he said.

He added that the number does not include 471 pending matters for the Department of Immigration, 278 matters for the Customs Department, the largest promotions exercise ever for the Department of Corrections and some 300 people who will be promoted at the Ministry of Public Works.

“I said to (Minister of Works Desmond Bannister) privately, man, it look like you promoting every single person in the Ministry of Works. I told my staff who has responsibility for the Ministry of Works, please don’t bring me no more Ministry of Works things because every day you bringing me something from the Ministry of Works about promotion. But it speaks to two facts. One, that for a long time we’ve ignored some of the ministries and departments and the DPM has made a carefully considered position and he has bought into the argument that these persons who are performing should be promoted.”

Mr Rolle said the administration wants to ensure that workers have the “capacity to earn a pension like everybody else.”

“Notwithstanding these difficult times, we are promoting hundreds of people,” he said.

The International Monetary Fund has repeatedly encouraged the government to slash its civil service wage bill.