Parliament approves financial autonomy of service commissions

By Michael Younge

The National Assembly on Wednesday afternoon approved the opposition’s motion to give financial autonomy and independence to four constitutional service commissions that were being treated, by error, as budget agencies which did not possess the power to draw directly from the Consolidated Fund to meet their functions.
The motion was tabled by the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) Member of Parliament Carl Greenidge and received the full support of the Alliance For Change (AFC). It did not benefit from the full support of government, which had initially proposed amendments that were voted down in the assembly.  The committees, which will now be transformed from budget agencies into autonomous agencies as contemplated by the Constitution of Guyana, will now join the other constitutional rights commissions and bodies enjoying that status under the new Fiscal Management and Accountability Act.
The new autonomous agencies that will draw from the fund are the judicial, the police, the public and teaching services commissions.  Greenidge said the motion was calling on the finance minister to make the transfer because of the fact that serious concerns are being raised about the current budget agency status of the commissions which could see them being influenced, dependent, and unable to impartially adjudicate their responsibilities without interference.
“The Fiscal Management and Accountability Act by the powers it gives to the minister over the operations of these entities that are treated as budget agencies, especially exposes the public servants and the bodies that are meant to oversee their interests, leaving them vulnerable to the very things that the Constitution intends on protecting them from,” he argued.
According to Greenidge, the politicisation of the public service in Guyana is something that must be condemned and corrected, now more than ever before, arguing that this has been the subject of much debate.
He said the request, of course, would by no means suggest that these agencies would be solely responsible for “calling the amounts of budget, or monies that they wanted”. Greenidge noted too that it did not mean that the commissions would be exempt from proper financial management, or the rules governing their functions and fiscal practices.
He said that the APNU was interested in giving the commissions the “financial independence” which would thereby result in “administrative independence” from the minister and executive.

Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, who presented the core arguments of government, said his administration supports in principle the motion, because there was nothing unlawful about the move to have these services commissions treated as autonomous financial agencies under Schedule 111 of the Fiscal Management and Accountability Act. In fact, Hinds said that his government has long recognised the importance of independence to the proper functionality and impartiality of these commissions.
“We on this side of the government do not contest that these four commissions are intended to have a degree of independence from any direction,” he reiterated during the debate of the motion. He was convinced that the issues related to the commissions were properly addressed in Article 222 A of the Constitution.  “We are willing to accept that there might have been an oversight,” he noted.
The prime minister, however, argued that it would be inappropriate or “incorrect” for his administration to take any action that is not fully in accordance with the Constitution, as he belaboured the point that such a move required review at the level of the Constitutional Reform Commission after which recommendations could be made to the Parliament for adoption.
He debunked innuendoes that government was interfering, prohibiting or exercising some amount of influence over the constitutional bodies. The prime minister disagreed strongly that the years the commissions were treated as budget agencies, their work were hampered or any request they made for resources were denied. Hinds said that the ruling administration has not even moved to change some of the senior public servants that it inherited from the previous People’s National Congress (PNC) administration, signalling that this was testimony to the levels of transparency and government’s respect for the rule of law and public servants.