Some City Hall workers could be laid off next year

Last Updated on Sunday, 24 December 2023, 22:34 by Writer

A number of Georgetown City Council workers could be laid off next year and others would be required to perform multiple functions as part of a staff restructuring exercise, City Mayor Alfred Mentore told a council meeting on Wednesday.

“Those matters in itself we will look at and we will look at seeing how we’ll be able to treat with matters generally with our staffing and how much staffing we have and how we could reallocate to different areas and what we need to employ and what we don’t need to employ and so on and so forth so those things will be considered in the next budget cycle,” he said when the council meeting was in official session.

In an interview with the media after the Council meeting, Mr Mentore could not definitively rule out whether a number of the estimated 530 workers would be sent home as part of the staff rationalisation plan. “I really can’t answer that immediately. I will need to get that kind of information from the Human Resource Department and Treasurer,” he said when asked by Demerara Waves Online News.

He said there was scope to “match and marry” duties of existing staff and reassign others to ensure quality service delivery and make a number of positions on paper redundant so that they would not be included in the budget.

City Human Resource Manager, Sherry Jerrick is spearheading the restructuring exercise by the Human Resource Committee which would dispatch its report to the 30-member council for consideration.

Before the council approved a 6.5 percent salary hike, GY$25,000 one-off bonus and back-pay for 2023, he also said during deliberations that the city administration would in return expect a higher quality of work. In exchange for being the highest paid municipal workers in Guyana, he said the Council would not tolerate “underperformance.” “We are not going to be playing with people. We are paying you handsomely and we expect handsome work,” said Mr Mentore, a private sector businessman. He indicated that the unions would be told that in exchange for collective bargaining, their members must perform their tasks efficiently.

According to the Chief Citizen, he had asked Town Clerk Candace Nelson for a list of permanent, temporary and unionised workers. He said the union would be summoned to talks to discuss the staff rationalisation plan.