The Public
Service Association (PSA) of Tonga submitted last Friday afternoon, 17th
August, a letter to the Hon. Speaker of Parliament, Lord Fakafanua, advising
the Hon. Members of Parliament to note that the Motion for the “Vote of No
Confidence” made by some of the People’s Representatives is against the Prime
Minister & his Cabinet and NOT the Public Servants & the Public
Service!
Following the response made by the Hon. Prime
Minister, Noble Tu’ivakano, 3 weeks ago on the Motion for the Vote of No
Confidence, the PSA decided to make a submission based on the following:
1.
The
Prime Minister, or any Prime Minister in the future, should not take the credit
of the good work of the Public Servants (which are ongoing programmes and
projects thought and planned by public servants) and use it as his defense in
his respond to the Motion. If the Prime
Minister takes credit from the good work of the public servants, then he should
also take the blame for any wrong doing made by the public servants. For example, when his Chief Secretary &
Secretary to Cabinet was suspended earlier this year while investigated for the
unaccounted millions of dollars from the budget of the Prime Minister’s Office
and also hundreds of thousands of dollars of aid funds from the Australian
& New Zealand Governments, then the Prime Minister should have also been
suspended together with his Chief Secretary & Secretary to Cabinet. Therefore, the Prime Minister should only use
his and/or his Cabinet Ministers’ good work that they had initiated in Cabinet,
if any, in his defense against the Motion for the Vote of No Confidence;
2.
The PSA
started to lose confidence in the Prime Minister in January 2012 when he did
not approve the request of the public servants and police to “cash out” 50% of
their retirement fund to help out with their urgent financial difficulties
especially when their request was within the Retirement Fund Act and
Regulations. Instead he had approved the
50% to be paid out directly to the loans of the Public Servants in the
commercial banks and the Retirement Fund Board.
This proved that the Prime Minister does not really care for the welfare
of the public servants & police;
The PSA lost confidence in the Prime
Minister when he recommended in February 2012 in Parliament in for the Auditor
General to be dismissed over a trivial matter, i.e. that the New Zealand
Minister for Foreign Affairs was offended over a comment supposedly made by the
Auditor General in the NZ TV news when the Auditor General was undertaking the
investigation of the unaccounted millions of dollars of the Tongan taxpayers
funds and also the hundreds of thousands of dollars of the Australian and New
Zealand taxpayers funds donated to Tonga.
The PSA totally lost confidence in the
Prime Minister when he clearly turned a blind eye from his responsibility as
the Minister responsible for the administration of the Public Service Act to
ensure that the Law is applied equally to junior public servants and also to
senior public servants when his Chief Secretary & Secretary to Cabinet was
recommended by the Auditor General around October 2011 to be suspended during
the investigation of the unaccounted millions of public funds. It was not until the PSA wrote to Prime
Minister and the Public Service Commission (PSC) in February 2012 that the PSC
and Cabinet suspended the Chief Secretary & Secretary to Cabinet.
3.
The
PSA is concern with this very important issue as they wanted the Prime
Minister, whether it is the current Prime Minister or a new one, to work
closely with the public servants and care for their welfare. In addition, the PSA wants a Prime Minister
and/or a political leader who know when to step down when suspected for wrong
doing, found incompetent or loss a political election in Parliament.
For more
information, please contact the Secretary General of PSA on +(676) 26-080 or
26-070, Monday 20th August 2012.
