Strike resulted from lack of foresight, says Tu'alau Mangisi [1]
Friday, September 23, 2005 - 17:45. Updated on Thursday, May 8, 2014 - 22:25.
Tonga's six week long strike by the Civil Servants could have been avoided, believes Sione Tu'alau Mangisi, a retired Chief Establishment Officer.
Sione said that if government had actioned a submission he made in 1989, proposing for the establishment of an independent Public Service Commission (PSC), a Higher Salaries Commission and a Public service Association, there would not have been any strike.
"Very unfortunate, because the nation is now suffering immensely because of that lack of foresight and the refusal to accept new technology," he said.
Sione said that he wrote a paper, called 'A Voice in the Wilderness,' which he presented to Cabinet at the end of 1989. He said Cabinet then met five times, "not to understand my paper but to find ways on how to get me out, and they could not come up with an answer, and at the end they had to ask the secretary, Taniela Tufui to come and ask me how to decapitate myself."
Sione said he was moved from the Establishment Division and became the Secretary for Fisheries.
He believes he lost Chief Establishment Office job, "because of petty jealousy, not only with myself but between heads of departments and even between ministers."
Sione said that in the 'A Voice in the Wilderness' he estimated that the cost of knowledge possessed by civil servants was worth a quarter of billion pa'anga, and he recommended that "unless you put up a proper structure, the quarter of a billion will eat you up through corruption. If the civil servants are unhappy they will sit around and play cards, and you can't afford to do that."
Personnel
Sione who has been in the Civil service for 26 years and studied Personnel Administration at university, said that in every government organization, "there are two components, one is money and two is labour. With money you can borrow, but you can't borrow labour. When people go on strike, you can't go out to ADB and say can we have two hundred doctors and this and that? It takes time to train these people, and it is very costly."
With regards to the old salary scale and the new salary scale, Sione said that the two scales were basically the same, "but what government is trying to do is to reassess the value of each post. Because times have changed and emphasis naturally has to change too, because certain posts have to be either deleted from the list or revalued as new posts."
Sione said that the harm was not informing the civil servants, "because each civil servant followed a career of its own. He wants to do certain thing and that was why he applied for the post. In another word he did not foresee that his career path would be changed."
Careers
Sione said that the Secretary of the PSC, Kelepi Makakaufaki, had admitted on television that the matter should have been referred for discussion by the staff, and to let them decide if they wanted to follow the same career or move to another career path.
Sione said that while he was with government he also recommended to Cabinet for senior civil servants and heads of departments to be seconded to the diplomatic corps, international organizations, regional organizations and to tertiary regional organization. "So that the lower levels from Level two down can move up, because if the senior civil servants and the heads of departments are held there then the lower Level two down start moving out off the service. So we will lose those professionals, creating a vacuum and when the top people retire then their successors won't have the required experience, and that is exactly what is happening now."
Sione said that the other three fundamental problems for government to solve were the creation of a Higher Salary Commission, the restructuring of the PSC so that it can be an independent entity and the formation of a Public Servants Association.
Stabilizes labour supply
Sione said that a Higher Salary Commission plays the same role as the National Reserve Bank. "The Reserve Bank controls all the banking activities of other commercial banks, in order to stabilize the money supply. The Higher Salary Commission stabilizes the labour supply. To get the right man for the right job is not an easy task and that is why there is a need for an independent PSC so that the labour is not affected by pressure from outside."
Sione said he was shocked that after the PSC was established then government put a mini Cabinet on top of it, with the Prime Minister as chairman, assisted by the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Land.
Sione said that if the 'Voice In the Wilderness' was heard there would have been an independent PSC, with a PSA to counter balance it, and the higher Salary Commission to set a relative salary scale with the private sector. "If they did that there would not have been any problem," he said.