INTERVENTION BY THE HON. FRED MITCHELL MP
MINISTER FOR THE PUBLIC SERVICE

24^th January 2007

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to stand today to move these bills that all deal with the pension legislation affecting the public service.

I propose to move today a bill to Amend the Pensions Act to Allow for the bridging of the Broken Service of Public Officers; A Bill for An Act to Amend the Pensions Act; A Bill for an Act to Make Pensionable the years of Service of the Beach Wardens; A Bill for Act to Save the Pension for Kendal Lewis.

These Bills may not seem important to many but for the public servant who has given all of his or her youth to the service and has been denied his or her full service because of a break in service this is an important bill.

Mr. Speaker, I have exhibited the rules that we propose to follow and gazette. The Bill that we intend to pass will put on a statutory basis the power which the Minister now exercises by the use of administrative rulings. This power will now be put on a statutory basis. The bill will give the Minister power to prescribe regulations and the regulations provide in draft for a person to write the Minister to seek for the service to be bridged. The matter is then sent on to the Public Service Commission for it to confirm and then on to the Governor General.

The purpose of this Bill to Amend the Pensions Act to Allow for the Bridging of the Broken Service of Public Officers is to empower the Minister for the Public Service, for the purposes of a pension or gratuity, to bridge the years of service of a public officer in order that the officer may qualify for a pensioner gratuity, provided the officer meets the prescribed guidelines.

For some years now public officers who would have previously served and resigned and who have since returned, have been petitioning the Ministry of Public Service. The requests are being made with a view to having the periods of employment made continuous, thereby bridging the officers’ service and thus allowing them to receive enhanced benefits on their retirement from the Public Service. In addition, there are public officers who previously worked for public library boards or government corporations, which at the time of service were not, or still may not be, Approved Authorities under the Pensions Act. Consequently, service in those agencies does not count for the purposes of the Pensions Act.

The break in service of these public officers occurred for various reasons, among them:

Some of the resignations could be categorized as constructive dismissals and under today’s law an industrial tribunal could order reinstatement.

The present legal advice which is followed by the Ministry of Public Service is that these requests for bridging can only be honoured either by legislation or policy directive in special cases which involved forced resignations. Examples of these special cases came about prior to 1960 when pregnant teachers were forced to resign for maternity purposes. There is also the class of nurses who were on midwifery courses, needed the time to become certified, but were denied the leave for this pursuit. This group of officers was advised to resign, but subsequently rejoined the service once they obtained their certification. The service benefited from their improved education.

While in the latter cases the officers services were bridged, it was through contorted legalisms which causes the decisions to become too subjective. The procedure in the Ministry of Public Service would be to treat the resignation as rescinded and grant unpaid leave for the period of absence.

In the case of persons from other government agencies, there may not have been a break in their moving from an agency into government but because the agency was not an approved authority, the service does not count for pension purposes.

Mr. Speaker it is important that we remember that this matter is discretionary and that it is not absolute but that it is usual where someone has given good and faithful service to the public service they have a legitimate expectation of a pension and gratuity.

This will do nothing to change the rate of the pension but will simply allow if you worked from one year to another then left the service and rejoined it, if the break is not more than two years the service can be bridged for the purpose of calculating a pension.

There are lots of problems with pension entitlements in the service and this will not fix them all but as they come to my attention I have been seeking to address them. This bill, indeed all of the Bills have the support of the Public Service Commission and all of the public sector unions and staff associations.

I want to say that there are other pieces of legislation that we propose to enact before the end of this term. I intend to review the provisions with regard to those who served as permanent secretaries as a result of a request from retired permanent secretaries. I also am reviewing the decisions taken by the previous administration to withhold the pensions of those who returned to work for the Government but whose pensions were suspended while working for the government. There is a particularly galling case involving retired prison officers.

The difficulty we have is that it has taken a long time to develop a consensus on these matters and it may have been done later in the year following the general elections. But one thing you are assured of and that is that this administration is committed in so far as the resources of the Government will permit to solving these issues. We are not unsympathetic to those persons who are pensioners and are on fixed incomes.

In fact the Government made a decision to pay a lump sum of 300 dollars to all its civil servant pensioners on 22^nd November and an additional fifty dollars per month on to the pensions. This was a decision of the Government last year. This is in accordance with a review of the pensions that I promised pensioners of the civil service last year and the Minster of State James Smith was moved to be able to do something about it. This is the second such increase for pensioners of the civil service since this Government has been in office and we have been able to do this without being fiscally irresponsible.

Mr. Speaker, I turn now to the other Bills which I expect to be passed today:

First the Bill for An Act to Amend the Pensions Act

This Bill for an Act to Amend the Pensions Act seeks to insert a new commencement date for sections 5 and formerly 4A and 4B which were inserted by Act No. 28 of 1998 and which came into force on the fifth day of August 1999.

This amendment, which came into force on 5^th August 1999, had the effect of conferring additional pension benefits on Permanent Secretaries who had served in the Public Service for a minimum of forty years or who had served in the Public Service for a minimum of twenty-five years and at least ten of those as Permanent Secretary.

When the existing provisions were initially proposed, members of a Committee of Permanent Secretaries warned that a computation formula should be devised to support the premise that maximum pension benefits would apply to certain circumstances, because certain persons may never benefit, not ever proportionately, if they did not meet the very precise and restrictive qualifying requirements. The Committee’s predictions were soon realized when several serving Permanent Secretaries who requested retirement, realized that they would have retired without qualifying for any of the stipulated provisions. Because of the shortsighted provisions, amendments became necessary by No. 36 of 2000 and No. 23 of 2001 when qualifying period of service for Permanent secretary was reduced to eight years. The earlier amendment empowered the Governor General to grant the additional pensions benefits given under 1998 Amendment for one-year period to a person, who during the period `1^st July, 2000 to 30^th June 2001 met the requirements. The latter amendment extended the same benefits conferred by Act No. 36 of 2000 to eligible persons for a further year. (30^th June 2002).

The reason for this Bill is that the late Mrs. Lois Symonette former Permanent Secretary since 1980 was excluded from the exercise. Mrs. Symonette retired on 23^rd April, 1999 after more than forty years in the Public Service. The problem is this case arose because the "Appointed Day Notice" for the relevant section of the legislation was not processed in a timely manner. Because of various delays, the processing of the Notice was not completed until August 1999 – three months after her retirement, despite the fact that she was in the Service in August 1998 – when the Act was actually passed by Parliament, and had met all the qualifying requirements. Indeed she was one of the architects of the 1998 Amendment and was qualified to receive additional pension benefits when the 1998 Amendment was passed. Unfortunately, by the time the 1998 Amendment was brought into force (5^th August, 1999) she had retired.

This Bill seeks to bring the Pensions (Amendment) Act, 1998 into force on the 1^st day of April, 1999, thereby enabling the late Mrs. Lois Symonette’s family to receive the additional pension benefits afforded by the 1998 amendment and for which she had been continually making representation.

Next I turn to the Bills to save the years of service of the Beach Wardens.

This is a matter Mr. Speaker with which I have some familiarity both as a private attorney and then more recently at the request of the Police Staff Association.

The purpose of the Beach Wardens Bill is to have the years of service of fourteen Beach Wardens who served as civilians with the Police Department added to their years of service as a police officer for pension purposes. The Kendal Lewis’ Bill seeks to have the years of service of Kendal Lewis as a Beach Warden added to his years of service in the Police Department in a civilian capacity and a Police Officer continuous for pension purposes.

In June 1975 a Beach Wardens Unit was established, under the Ministry of Tourism to curb crime and harassment of Bahamians and tourists alike on the beaches. They were treated as normal quasi-government employees, including participation in the Pension Plan at the Ministry of Tourism. In 1993, The Government of The Bahamas via Cabinet Conclusion ICO 6(93)14 dated 9^th February, 1993 agreed to transfer the Unit under the umbrella of the Police Department. Consequent upon this move, the fourteen Beach Wardens were unable to be transferred to the Police Department in accordance with the Pensions act as they were not participants in the Ministry of Tourism’s Pension Plan. As a result, they were not able to bring their years of service over. They were therefore appointed as new employees, in a civilian capacity, in the Police Department in 1993. In 1996 they became full fledge police officers and once again was not able to have their years of service from 1993-1996 joined to their service as a police officer.

Mr. Kendal Lewis, on the other hand, was a participant in the Ministry of Tourism’s Pension Plan and was able to transfer to the Police Department, in a civilian capacity. However, in July, 1996 when he enlisted on the Royal Bahamas Police Force his years of service from 1979-1996 could not be added to his service as a Police Officer.

In the case of all the Beach Wardens they were advised by the Ministry of Tourism, in writing, that their transfer to the Police Department would not affect their years of service with the Ministry of Tourism.

In order for these officers who are not Police Officers not to be disadvantaged once again and to enhance their pension benefits under the Police Act this Bill will preserve their years of service for pension purposes.