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Weekly UpdatesIt is generally the case in plural societies that the civil service and government are dominated by one powerful group. This was so under colonial rule, and in countries such as Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana these conditions exist even today. Under such arrangements, it was to be expected that the formulation of policy and the delivery of goods and services were biased towards rewarding the dominant group. This problem was further compounded with the introduction of New Public Management (NPM) during the 1990s.
Introducing NPM, a set of ideas and practices largely imported from the private sector, signaled a paradigm shift in public sector HR management under which job-performance criteria would replace individual merit as the basis for making personnel decisions. NPM's major emphasis was on output rather than input, and competition became a major feature of reform. Implementing this new model of public management, presented a number of challenges for senior administrators who were required to manage reengineered organizations.
A more formidable challenge would be presented to senior administrators in plural societies because policies put in place to address group interests would have to be replaced by policies that facilitated the achievement of broader societal goals along with the meeting of citizens' demand. For administrators, apart from the challenges in adopting a new managerial mode of service delivery, changes in attitudes and behaviors were required as well. This article examines some of the challenges that senior administrators in the Trinidad and Tobago bureaucracy will face as they try to come to grips with the problems and challenges of implementing NPM.
NPM has been one of the most discussed topics in public administration reform. (1) While writers have focused on a number of countries, the debates over NPM have centered on the broad themes of advancing arguments for the universal adoption of NPM and questioning whether NPM is appropriate in all countries. In a few cases, writers have focused on how the implementation NPM will lead to changes in leadership roles. The leadership literature has been selective, however, and the major emphasis has been on the role of the cabinet ministers or the political appointees who head government departments and agencies. (2) There has also been little attempt to investigate the challenges that face senior public administrators in developed countries, let alone developing countries characterized as plural societies such as Fiji, Suriname, Guyana and Trinidad.
Trinidad and Tobago has appropriately been described as a plural society since the islands' population consists of two major ethnic groups. Africans make up approximately 39.6% of the country's population, and East Indians make up roughly 40.3% of the population. These two groups have a long history of political rivalry, and the next largest ethnic segment of islands' population is categorized as mixed (18.4%). Just 0.6% of the country's people are categorized as Caucasians.
The concept of a plural society was first defined by Furnivall, who wrote in 1948 that such societies comprise
Plural societies tend over time to produce two types of elites. The first type are the administrators, who control political and administrative power, while the second type are the entrepreneurs, who are excluded from effective political participation. While from a normative perspective, the nature of plural societies require both groups of elites to work toward establishing a genuine multiracial society with acceptable mechanisms for defusing and controlling ethnic conflicts, it has been found, generally, that ethnic insecurities often force policymakers to respond to "communal pulls." The elites tend to prioritize and pursue interests that enhance the security and welfare of their respective groups. In other words, the collective good of the society is often sacrificed for private or ethnic interests. Thus, one can argue that to a large extent, irrespective of the administrative structure or systems that is in place in public bureaucracies in plural societies, the group that occupies the top positions in the government and bureaucracy determines the nature and beneficiaries of public services.
It is not surprising, therefore, to find that in Trinidad and Tobago, during the period 1956-1986, the African-descended population, who are commonly referred to as Afro-Trinidadians, enjoyed a monopoly in the political sphere and exercised control as senior administrators in the public services, This ethnic group also held most of the senior posts on the police force and in the armed forces. Over those three decades, East Indians, or Indo-Trinidadians, complained of discrimination in employment and were largely critical of the government for what they believed to be inequity in the distribution of state resources, in particular the distribution of housing, the award of scholarships, the establishment of community centers, and the funding of nongovernmental organizations.
For example, the Trinidad Express newspaper reported on October 22, 1970, that of the 100 employees of the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago, 84 were Afro-Trinidadians, 10 were Indo-Trinidadians, 3 were of Chinese descent, 2 were of Portuguese descent, and 1 was white. This unequal employment situation was still in evidence in 1989, when the Trinidad Express published statistics on June 25 showing that of the total number of persons employed in all government organizations, 29% were Indo-Trinidadians. In the police force, the Regiment of the Defense Force, the Coast Guard, and the Port Authority, respectively, the percentage of Indo-Trinidadians was 25%, 5%, 16% and 6%. It is also important to again note that according to Census data, Indo-Trinidadians at the time made up 40.3% of the country's population, while Afro-Trinidadians made 39.6%.
To a large extent, claims of ethnic imbalances in employment in the public sector were confirmed in 1992, when a study conducted by The Centre of Ethnic Studies at the University of the West Indies in St. Augustine, Trinidad, revealed that there was gross underrepresentation of Indo-Trinidadians in public service, particularly at the higher levels (see Table 1 and Table 2). (4)
The report also showed that so far as professional positions were concerned, Indo-Trinidadians reached and surpassed the equity ratio in areas of medicine and finance (see Table 3). In the latter category, however, the criteria for employment and advancement was clearly technical skill. It should be noted that since 1994, there has been a movement away from promotion by seniority in the Trinidad and Tobago public service, and many of the higher-level positions are now filled by contract employees. Statistics on the gender and ethnicity of individuals recruited and promoted within the country's public service are thus no longer available.
In plural societies with a two-party political system, the retention of power legitimately by one ethnic group is understandable and has often been described as a parentela relationship. (5) The result is that the ethnic group loyal to the political party in power benefits from patronage and becomes the dominant group in the bureaucracy. When the parentela relationship became established in Trinidad and Tobago, the age-old principle of seniority ensured that public servants of African descent inherited the power from the departing colonials. These were, however, not the only factors that led to the lack of parity in the distribution of positions at the higher levels of the bureaucracy.
It should be recalled that when the country became independent, the bureaucracy in Trinidad and Tobago was largely established along neutral lines. Like most of the former British colonies, the islands inherited a civil service that operated on some very basic principles, one of which was a centralized hierarchy. This essentially Weberian structure had a number of advantages, especially for plural societies. For example, control mechanisms such as Public Service Commissions (PSCs) ensured that there was a distinct separation between the political and the administrative spheres of government. Additionally, an expected advantage of the Weberian structure was that rewards and services would have been allocated equally and without bias.
As events unfolded in Trinidad and Tobago, however, a number of criticisms were directed against the PSC that had primary responsibility for appointments, promotions, discipline and transfers. The Indo-Trinidadian population complained that the PSC gave preferential treatment to Afro-Trinidadians, and some of the reports on the PSC's performance commissioned by the government suggest that when it came to the appointment of staff, the PSC was placing square pegs in round holes.
It was suggested that selection methods employed by the PSC were biased against Indo-Trinidadians and, in particular, women. According to the 1992 report by the Centre of Ethnic Studies, the bias appeared to exist in the composition of the interviewing panels that, prior to the 1990s, included only males and Afro-Trinidadians. Another factor, according to the report, had to do with the way in which Indo-Trinidadians and Afro-Trinidadians had been assimilated in the society. It was suggested that Afro-Trinidadians were the first to enter public service because they were more academically qualified than their Indo-Trinidadian counterparts. Because promotion was made on the basis of seniority, it meant that Afro-Trinidadians, with the departure of the colonials, would occupy the upper echelons of the public service. With respect to occupations in the police force and the Regiment, it was argued that Indo-Trinidadians applicants were rejected because they did not meet the physical requirements for those jobs, such as above-average height and weight.
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