Forty-four public officers who did not want to be employed by the Barbados Revenue Authority (BRA), or were not offered positions with the recently-established statutory corporation, have been assigned to other ministries and departments in the Civil Service.
As a result, said Chief Personnel Officer Gail Atkins, 19 temporary employees had been displaced. However, she gave the assurance that whenever vacancies were found in the system, they would be rehired.“Having placed the 44 public officers, it would have had an impact on temporary officers because the system by which we operate is one where, once we have a vacancy created by an appointed officer moving to another ministry or department, we may bring in a temporary employee,” Atkins said in a Barbados Government Information Service release yesterday.
“Once we bring back a permanent holder of a post it would have the effect of displacing that temporary employee. We have been able to reassign temporary officers to other ministries and departments where vacancies were available and for others we have had to terminate their services . . . .”
Atkins said the Personnel Administration Division had been using the “last in, first out” policy for retrenching temporary public officers over the past few months. She explained that the division had looked at the seniority of all temporary officers within those positions identified by the Ministry of the Civil Service where cuts would have to be made; the employees were identified and termination letters prepared and sent to the permanent secretaries and heads of departments for distribution to the officers. (BGIS/BW)
