To many taxpayers worried about waste in government, the call by the St. Maarten Hospitality and Trade Association (SHTA) to introduce “biometric time-clocks” at all departments (see related story)
no doubt sounds like a welcome idea. After all, civil servants collect a full-time salary with benefits and should put in a regular workday and -week, just like the majority of persons in the private sector do.
Whether such an investment indeed will pay for itself in a year as stated is another matter, as that assumes either personnel cost goes down or productivity up. The former is not likely, because public employees tend to earn a fixed amount per month and probably will do what they have to not to lose income, which is, of course, in itself a good thing.
Increasing productivity due to being on the job longer might therefore be more probable, although the question is what that actually will mean in terms of better service, which depends on several other factors as well. One also needs to keep in mind that time-clocks will not necessarily address the issue of absenteeism, which during the recent budget debate was said to be rather high, particularly among security guards, and prompting a lot of additional overtime pay.
A temporary solution in the sense of hiring external security until the problem can be studied was mentioned, but that too costs money. There have been suggestions in the past of, for example, prison officials staying home on purpose so their colleagues could get the lucrative extra hours, so this matter definitely must be looked into carefully.
SHTA urges proper attendance control and enforcing a no-work-no-pay policy. The latter might be a bit difficult under certain circumstances due to the LMA regulations governing the civil service, but there can be little doubt something needs to be done, also about the so-called “ghost workers” who fail to show up without a valid reason.
Discrepancies or preferential treatment are detrimental to any organisation and government is no exception. If people believe what they consider an injustice or unfair practices are allowed to continue, it usually will translate to a general lack of motivation with all possible consequences.
