FOUR-AND-a-half months after Prime Minister P.J. Patterson placed a three-month freeze on the hiring of Government consultants, the public has yet to learn what determination has been made, if any, on the way forward.
Speaking to The Gleaner yesterday, Audley Shaw, Opposition spokesman on Finance, said that there has been no indication as to whether the freeze had been lifted.
"The danger here is that the Government will ignore the issue and hope that it will go away and then get back to business as usual," he said.
LONG-AWAITED REPORT
In July, when the Prime Minister tabled the long-awaited report on consultants/advisers in the public sector in the House of Representatives, he said then that the three-month freeze was intended to provide sufficient time for a clear definition of the role and functions of these categories of persons to be developed, approved by the Cabinet, and then made public.
But with no chance of a follow-up report being brought to Parliament before the end of the year (Parliament is on Christmas break), Mr. Shaw said: "We need to hear from either the Prime Minister himself, or the Cabinet Secretary, a definitive policy statement on the future role of consultants and their compensation within the context of the very tight fiscal situation being faced by the country."
SEVERAL ATTEMPTS
Despite several attempts throughout the week, The Gleaner has been unable to contact the Cabinet Secretary, Dr. Carlton Davis, who was responsible for producing the consultants' report. It revealed that Government consultants were receiving $326 million per year. That was more than three times the figure initially revealed in March when Dr. Omar Davies, the Minister of Finance, presented his own report which indicated that 64 consultants were raking in more than $95 million a year.
But the Cabinet Secretary's report indicated that the total number of persons termed consultant, special adviser or adviser/consultant stood at 144. Of that number, 76 were employed within the civil service and 68 in parastatals (statutory corporations and government companies).
