By LYNAIRE MUNNINGS

Tribune Staff Reporter

lmunnings@tribunemedia.net

LABOUR and Public Services Minister Pia Glover-Rolle said a widespread promotional exercise for public servants will begin in October, the first in over nine years.

She said hundreds of public servants are awaiting promotion, which will cost about $6m.

“This process will see hundreds of public servants promoted, many of which have already been doing the work without receiving the titles and increased pay,” she said.

“People have waited years for the promotions they earned to be processed. Sadly, some have waited decades. And while we cannot give them back the years they waited, we can ensure that the wait will be over on our watch.”

“For the people who have qualified for and earned more than one promotion during the time they waited, they will be double promoted to get them to where they were supposed to be.”

The promotional exercise restarted in April and was halted in 2014.

“The service-wide promotion covers the entire country,” Mrs Glover Rolle said. “Every ministry, every department, every unit, and that, of course, equates to hundreds of public servants we have been processing.

 “The deadline for ministries to submit recommendations to the Ministry of Public Service was on July 1, and on July 1 we started processing. Every day, the Ministry of Public Service and Public Service Commission is processing those files.”

 She could not say precisely how many public servants will be processed.

 “We will continue working to decrease the decades-long backlog of promotions, regularizations, classifications, and other longstanding matters that our public servants have waited far too long to have resolved,” she said.

 “The only way we can have a modern, productive, and efficient public service is if we are taking care of our people.”