Email

Print

And one part of today’s hearing which caught our attention was Hulse’s conversation with the Senate Committee about the Public Service Commission.

You’ll remember his very strong comments against the Commission for the tribunal’s decision to reinstate the immigration officers who were suspected being culpable for the Won Hong Kim Passport scandal.

Well, the Senators brought that topic back up today, and they asked him about the dilemma of holding public officers responsible for wrongdoings versus trying to protect rights to natural justice. 

Here’s that part of the hearing today:

Hon. Godwin Hulse - Minister of Immigration

"There has to be some recourse, there has to be some process that the person can be held responsible and the sad thing is that for example in the case of the three people we took before the commission that those people were sent back and reinstated and paid on half pay and now reinstated with full pay gives the wrong signal to the entire public service, destroy the confidence in the department and everybody in the department for the most part knew that something terribly went wrong and that is where I have a difficulty. How we fix it that is for the entire assembly to sit and discourse how we deal with public sector matters at that level."

Hon. Mark Lizarraga - Senator, Business Sector

"Minister with the greatest of respect you are a member of cabinet now. Obviously it has to be an issue..."

Hon. Godwin Hulse

"Yes it is an issue, cabinet has discussed it over and over but the public service commission constitutionally forms the body with full autonomy and authority and subject to direction of anybody except the commission that has been appointed and the commission is a broad based commission, it's not a government commission alone."

Hon. Mark Lizarraga

"Let's get to the Laws of Belize minister and we have not seen any laws coming to this honourable house to try strengthen or fix those systems which you are aware are broken or wrong."

Hon. Godwin Hulse

"Yeah but as I said the commission is a constitutionally established body, it's a broad; not only government people are on it. It is independent, it has a chair, it has people appointed by both sides of the parliament and cases go before the commission. It's that firewall that insulates public officers from the very criticism that have been levied over the years of political operative haul and pulling the public service etc. and it creates that firewall. So that the very firewall that we are investigating where if somebody, if a minister went to somebody and said do this nationality and the person said no and the minister said we will fire you, it is to prevent that very kind of thing that in fact that firewall exist. The public officers come under the CEO, come under their directors and if there is an issue they are taken before the public service commission by those people, it completely cuts off the political directory."

We understand The Senate Hearings, are winding down, the last report we got is that only a few more witnesses will be called. It is expected those witnesses will not require any marathon sessions like the others before them.