Government “Surprised” By GSD Comments On The Civil Service
The Government has said it is “surprised” by the GSD’s recent statement on the civil service.
A statement from the Government follows below:
The Government totally rejects the nonsensical accusations of the GSD Opposition regarding the appearance of civil servants in the media.
The GSD’s position undermines civil servants capabilities to work effectively and explain information in their relevant fields of profession that is largely technical, rather than political.
The Chief Minister, the Hon. Fabian Picardo QC MP said: “We are politically accountable and we defend the decisions we have made. We believe it is right to permit Civil Servants to put information out into the public domain in a non-political way, in these extraordinary times, which is informative and beneficial to our community. We are giving access to the public to the experts in these fields at this critical time so that the public can have confidence in the information being provided to them.
“I am particularly surprised by the Opposition’s statement because they in the GSD are the ones who want to make civil servants accountable in the Public Accounts Committee. The GSD want to put in place a system to cross-examine civil servants instead of asking us to be politically accountable on questions on finances, when they have the chance in the debate on the estimates each year in the committee stage and third reading. The GSD’s position is therefore entirely contradictory.
“I want to take this opportunity to thank our fantastic civil service and the public sector generally for their continuous hard work and not shying away from new challenges, this year in particular. They have been superb and they are respected by the general public especially for their work this year. It is a pity that the GSD would wish to see our public sector workers hidden from view as they have suggested today”.
