‘Produce the evidence’ of favouritism in public service- PS Brotherson to GTUC’s Vansluytman-Corbin

Last Updated on Tuesday, 1 May 2018, 18:11 by Denis Chabrol

Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of the Presidency’s Department of the Public Service, Reginald Brotherson on Tuesday lashed back at the Guyana Trades Union Congress’ (GTUC) Women’s Advisory Committee (WAC) member, Karen Vansluytman-Corbin for publicly charging favouritism at that government entity.

“You just don’t go up on a podium and malign people like that. You just don’t wake up and get in the public domain and make wild, wild accusations” Brotherson told Demerara Waves Online News.

The Permanent Secretary said he was not worried about a probe, saying that he has so far given 36 years of public service and so he was taken aback by the allegations of Vansluytman-Corbin. “I’m at a loss. It’s laughable,” he said. He called on the WAC member to produce evidence of her charges of cronyism at the Department of the Public Service. “Whatever evidence she has on that, let her produce it,” Brotherson added.

He strongly believed that the WAC member does not understand the difference between the Department of the Public Service and the Public Service Commission which is responsible for employing persons on the fixed pensionable establishment of the public service.

Brotherson stressed that since he has been at the Department of Public Service, public service matters were being dealt with in a “more transparent manner”. Among the steps taken so far, he said, is the transferal of more than 4,000 contracted government employees to the regular public service which functions under the rules of the Public Service Commission. He said wherever necessary public servants are receiving acting allowances.

Earlier Tuesday at a May Day Rally, she said the Department of Public Service “ought to be functioning in the benefit of all public servants. It is not happening.” She charged it is instead, “functioning for some public servants, the friends and cronies of a few and I’m saying it and I have the evidence to support it…I’m asking our national leaders to please look into that because it is happening…please look into that.”

Her call for a probe into the Department of the Public Service was issued in the presence of Ministers of Government, Basil Williams SC., Keith Scott, Karen Cummings, Annette Ferguson and Simona Broomes among other union leaders and public servants.