Attorney General tells terminated public servants to challenge their dismissals – says law was complied with

The Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, have made it clear that the dismissal of public servants, following the PPP/C’s government assumption into office in August, was in compliance with the law.
Nandlall also said that any dismissed public servant is free to challenge their dismissal.
He made this disclosure during his weekly “Issues in the News” program in which he also highlighted several challenges the administration encountered since assuming office. He also spoke about the achievements made in their first 100 days.

Following the conclusion of Guyana’s five month-long General and Regional Election process and the government taking office, a number of public servants were sent packing. They ranged from Permanent Secretaries, advisors and other ministries’ staffers.
The A Partnership For National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC), now in Opposition, on many occasions accused the PPP/C government of discrimination in their firing of government employees.
Former President David Granger had contended that the government started their tenure off on the wrong foot by firing these persons.

“At a personal level, you would have mothers and fathers going home to their households, going home to their children, saying I don’t have a job. This is in the middle of a pandemic. People are without work, people are wondering where their next meal is coming from, and you sending people home,” Granger had said.
However, Nandlall, on his program, lamented that he would have been reading the contracts carefully and that their dismissals comply with the law and the contracts that they were employed under.
He said that those dismissed were “political sycophants” installed into the public sector by the former government.

These persons, he said, in some cases had no qualification and expertise, but still got the job because of “political connections” and not a meritocracy.
The Attorney General described them as politicians, not public servants, and evidence of this could be seen on their Facebook pages and other outlets, actively engaging in politics.
“They’re not public servants, they’re politicians and they were given sinecure appointments – and sinecure appointments are to be terminated,” he maintained.

Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeira had also made it clear that the PPP/C administration was not looking at public servants only political appointees.
Upon terminating the contracts of these persons, it was explained several times by the government that with the change in Government, political appointees under the Coalition were expected to resign from their posts.
A number of persons refused and the Government decided to issue termination letters to those appointees.
There were also instances where persons refused to demit office, locking them out and refusing to return state property.