GGCA “dismayed” by Bossano’s budget speech

The GGCA committee said it is “dismayed” by the comments made regarding the public sector by Sir Joe Bossano in his budget speech last week.

In his speech, the Minister for Public Sector Efficiency said the public sector is “unsustainable” in its current form, even without Brexit.

Mr Bossano also said there is a need to ensure greater efficiency across the public service to deliver improved value for money.

A spokesman for the GGCA yesterday said: “We are very concerned about this as the GGCA, in representation of the civil service workforce, attempted to co-operate with the Public Efficiencies Process after visiting many departments to obtain ideas about possible areas of streamlining (with full assistance from the membership, who were happy to contribute valuable suggestions).”

“However, we had to request meetings with Mr Bossano to communicate these ideas from the staff. We did not have monthly meetings and often had to chase him for such meetings to be arranged.”

“Given this, we feel it is totally unacceptable for Mr Bossano to make such statements. The workforce has been trying to propose changes to create greater efficiencies but Mr Bossano does not want to listen. It is extremely unfair, then, that we are made targets of public statements of this nature.”

In addition, the GGCA said the public sector pay rise is in breach of the 2015 GSLP/Liberals manifesto, which states: “At the end of the two year period, we will again commit to Public Sector pay rising at least by the rate of inflation each year as from financial year 18/19.”

The committee pointed out that in this year’s budget speech, the Chief Minister stated that the rate of inflation this year is 2.6%. However, they said, the public sector pay rise is 2.5% and this is capped at 60p an hour for officers who earn £46,000 and above.

The budget was discussed at a GGCA general meeting held last week, and it was determined that an extraordinary general meeting will need to be held to discuss the budget outcomes.

The committee said they are hoping to hold the meeting in the next couple of weeks to obtain a mandate from their members in respect of these matters.