A Barbados academic is calling for an end to the eight-hour day in the Public Service, saying it would free-up latent dynamism in the sector.
Director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies at the University of the West Indies, Don Marshall said Government workers being on the job for less than the traditional 40-hour week was one of the necessary steps that must be taken to repurpose the public sector to become more efficient and effective.
“They are sitting down there … We talk about productivity and so on, but you set them up to fail,” Professor Marshall (pictured) said.
You set them up to be under-performing because some of our best and brightest minds find themselves in the public sector and they are not necessarily happy campers,” he said.
“We need to free up the dynamism that is laying dormant within the public sector because many of our talented and bright persons end up working for the Government — it’s the nature of our economies not being diversified enough for a broader-based private sector to employ them.”
Professor Marshall dismissed the widely-held view that the Public Service was too large, referring to it as a lazy idea which would not be beneficial for the kind of society Barbadians had inherited.
“The State will remain the largest employer and must find a way to dynamically release the talents and potential of Public Servants who find themselves working nine-to-five,” he said.
Professor Marshall said he believed an ideal working day should be a minimum of five hours, leaving workers adequate time to spend with their families, or engage in some form of entrepreneurial activities within the boundaries of their employment contracts.
“We have a large Public Service, so why not repurpose it to put its talents where they might be best suited?” he asked.
Bridgetown, 16 July 2022
