Recently, certain departments of the Anguilla Public Service have come under significant public scrutiny. Public officers are regularly subjected to public scrutiny and that is how it should be because citizens and residents of Anguilla – as well as visitors to Anguilla – fund all the benefits received by public officers. Public officers should, therefore, readily accept that they are accountable to members of the public and must be open to regular scrutiny. Sadly, an attitude reflective of the fact that citizens, residents and visitors fund their benefits is not often seen in the behaviour of public officers. Too often, little attention is paid to the fact that persons are waiting at the end of the public service process to get on with their lives. Many persons, including the individual public officers, can be held accountable for this poor attitude.
Public officers are amongst the most privileged in Anguilla in terms of security of job tenure and the benefits associated with their employment. It is no secret that persons employed in the Anguilla Public Service have very little fear of losing their employment – and the benefits associated with such employment. This absence of fear results firstly from the existence of rules and regulations designed to ensure that due process is followed when addressing any alleged misdeeds on their part. Many officers have no fear of sanction because they place reliance on their line managers being too unwilling to employ the detailed and time-consuming processes required to ensure that a public officer’s misdeeds do not go unchecked. Therefore, while it is not impossible, as some persons have been heard to say, to dismiss officers from the Public Service, it requires diligence and commitment on the part of line managers if appropriate measures are to be taken to address poor performance and behaviour of officers.
It is well known that one of the biggest failings of line managers in the Anguilla Public Service is their failure to document infractions and the actions taken in relation to those infractions. Sadly, this means that the information required to dismiss non-performing officers is often non-existent. In the global context, Anguilla is a mere village where everybody knows everybody and can claim them as family, classmate or friend. If these relations continue to constrain us from addressing delinquencies in the Public Service, the services offered will be substandard and most, if not all, persons associated with the public service will be considered substandard.
While the failure of line managers to utilise the means available to them to address delinquency cannot be discounted, the failure of individual public officers to personally hold themselves to high standards must also be acknowledged. I believe that this is in fact the biggest ill plaguing the Anguilla Public Service. In many instances, line managers and the persons reporting to them are content with mediocrity and hence, in many instances, the resulting output from the Public Service is mediocre.
How can this apparently festering situation be addressed? It requires persons in the highest echelons of the Public Service to regularly demonstrate their willingness to be unpopular. Such unpopularity will result from their willingness to demand accountability from their subordinates, their colleagues of equal rank, their line managers and elected officials. This course is a difficult one, but is one which must be taken if persons responsible for the management of the Public Service are serious about ensuring that taxpayers receive value for money from public officers.
Citizens, residents and visitors all have a vital role to play in ensuring the provision of improved pubic services. If we are accept the service we receive from public officers – that is the level of service we are likely to continue to receive. While it is admittedly a slow process, it is my belief that our collective demand for better services will see positive results. In this respect, it is recognised that the media can, and should, be regularly and responsibly used to highlight instances of both poor and exemplary public service.
Dedicated action on the part of persons at all levels of the Anguilla Public Service, particularly those at the highest echelons, fueled by the demands and actions of citizens, residents and visitors, can result in a Public Service we can all speak of with pride. We have reason for hope as Governor Foy, from his position at the pinnacle of the Anguilla Public Service, in a recent interview with Ivor Hodge, of Radio Anguilla, alluded to the need for pubic sector reform. We look forward, eagerly, to better service delivery as a result of improvements in the performance of public officers.
