The Bahamas is in very many respects a truly wonderful country. Despite hype and ballyhoo, there is absolutely no doubt that this country has been spared some of the more horrific distresses experienced by some of its neighbours.
Interestingly, The Bahamas has been able to do as well as it has precisely because it has seen fit to become a ‘welcoming society’. People from around the world come to The Bahamas, safe in the conviction that this is a good place. A part of the explanation for this benign state of affairs is due, in no small measure, to the innate conservatism of the Bahamian people. Their style calls for them to make haste slowly. While this penchant and respect for tradition is a social good, its downside is that it can become a major constraint on development in a time when innovation and change are the order of the day. Nowhere is this seen more clearly as it is currently being expressed in repeated calls for public sector reform.
The reality today is while calls are continuously being made for the public sector to be reformed, little of any real import is being done to bring this about. There is evidence in abundance to support the thesis that an inefficient and bloated public sector is inherently counter-productive to efforts to put The Bahamas on a more fruitful path to more sustained economic growth and social progress.
With this as our posited premise, we make the case that public sector reform is an essential co-requisite to the orderly progress and development of The Bahamas. Long gone are the days when Bahamians could blissfully abide slackness and inefficiency in the public sector, safe in the comfort of knowing that the foreign sector would endlessly drive economic and social progress in The Bahamas.
There is a correlate to this argument which is that The Bahamas might have enjoyed an even higher standard of living in the past four decades had it not been for the massive wastefulness and inefficiency of successive Bahamian governments, all of which were ill-served by an outmoded public bureaucracy, itself a relic of a defunct and moribund British Colonial service.
To this day, work in the public service brings with it security of tenure, easy money and a pension when these workers retire. Mercifully, this regime is being challenged here at home and from abroad. As The Bahamas gears itself to cope with pressures for it to become more productive, there is the dawning realization that public sector reform is not only desirable, but that it is necessary. One indicator of this new appreciation of the facts of life in an increasingly interdependent world is noted in recent calls for the government to hold the line on employment and pay in the public sector. Another is the proposal that pay increases should be linked to productivity.
These suggestions speak to the need for public sector enterprises to become more entrepreneurial, and that reward for labour be commensurate with performance and productivity.
If it is true – as we surmise – that productivity is low in the public service precisely because respect, recognition and reward come with position and not for performance, this might explain why some of the most senior managers in the public sector earn so much for doing so little.
Having grown accustomed to being little more than highly paid clerical assistants to Cabinet Minister, these men and women become, over time, the epitome of mediocrity. Few of them would last twenty-four hours in the foreign sector of the Bahamian economy. If, for example, anyone at any position in the management of Bahamasair were to be asked to base their pay on performance and productivity, practically everyone on the payroll of the hapless national flag carrier would owe the government money. Similar nightmares exist elsewhere in the public service.
In the instance of the Ministry of Trade and Industry, for example, no one in his right mind would dare suggest any connection between what those employees do, the money they earn and value added for the Bahamian people.
To be sure, this list can be extended to include other egregious examples of public sector enterprises where low productivity and shoddy performance are being respected, rewarded and recognised as par for the course in an inefficient and backward public sector.
The essence of the matter, then, is that The Bahamas must find a way to break with this tradition of featherbedding, ease and security of tenure in the public service. Obviously, this cannot be achieved overnight. What must be done now – as a matter of the most urgent priority – is for Prime Minister the Hon. Perry G. Christie and his team to realize that no matter how grand their vision for the future of this nation, it cannot band will not be achieved in a system where productivity and pay are systematically de-linked. A Commission is sorely needed to review this question.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
