3 weeks ago
5
After coming under scrutiny for comments made to the media on Friday, the former President of the Public Service Union Gerald Henry did another interview today. It is his hope that he will be able to clarify the comments made regarding his non-performance at work. According to Henry, the government is trying to force him and his colleagues at the Office of the Auditor General to sign an illegal document. The career public officer says that efforts have been underway for years to get auditors to sign on to a code of ethics. He contends that if the auditors sign these documents, it will open them up to sanctions and disciplinary actions that are outside the scope of the public service regulations. He maintains that this refusal to sign was the real motivation for the Ministry of Public Service to deduct $400 from his salary and not his repeated tardiness.
Gerald Henry, Former PSU President: “The office for quite a while now has been trying to get us to sign what is actually an illegal document and it’s called a code of ethics. The office wanted to establish a code of ethics, right? Which is not required, honestly, because we already have a code of conduct and they are speaking about the international standards and so on that is exactly what this international standards only suggest and the international standards, by the way, is mainly for the private audit institutions. It’s not necessarily the government audit institutions. So there are certain things that the office tries to adopt at certain points but we have not signed on to any agreement with those international organizations. So we are not committed to them in any way. And those are only suggested things that the international standards suggest that the office would have either a code of ethics or a code of conduct. The public service regulations already provides us with a code of conduct. So there is absolutely no reason for us to sign on to a code of ethics and that’s position that myself and my colleagues have been standing on for quite a while. And not only that but the code of ethics that they wanted to implement has in some very dangerous regulations in there. That we could be disciplined when they want and how they want and a private institution. The international standards say absolutely nothing about discipline.”
Henry further alleged that not signing the document is also the major reason he has not been given any work to do for the past two and a half years. He says he now feels he and his colleagues are being set up to fail.
Gerald Henry, Former PSU President: “The reason why we were not given any work to do from October 2022 is because they were trying to force us to sign the code of ethics. And so when I spoke about the fact that I have not been doing anything in the office whatsoever, having a master’s degree by the way and over 30 years of experience, compare that to from February that they are saying that I’m arriving at work late and they are making a big issue out of that. Right? So when you compare the two, man, you can’t compare that because they caused the people of Belize to spend between myself and my two colleagues close to I think it was close to a half a million dollars in our salaries. Correct? And getting absolutely no work done out of us, no work, because we refuse to sign a document that is illegal. We have been assigned tasks to do but at every point along the way, including even at the end when we completed it, when we have completed the task, the process has been frustrated because the goal here is not necessarily for us to be given work and to be assessed objectively. The objective here, right, in giving us tasks is for them now to turn around and say, we don’t know what we are doing.”
We note that Henry also attributes some of his woes to a two-man protest he held earlier this month in Belmopan, over what he feels are undeserved promotions in the public service.
English (US) ·