Thousands of contract workers in the public sector, including sanitation workers, cooks and watchmen in the primary school system, are to receive permanent employment status, starting in the 2023/24 fiscal year.

Finance minister Dr Nigel Clarke indicated on Tuesday that the Government is moving to make good on its promise to address the decades-old practice in the sector, which barred that category of worker from pension and other critical benefits over the years.

Opening the 2023/24 budget in the House of Representatives, he said the work is to begin with 8,522 contract workers at the Ministry of Education, including 716 cooks and 52 assistant cooks in the primary school system, 367 watchmen, and 659 caregivers in infant schools.

He advised that an audit of employment in the education ministry showed that 636 out of 4,460 vacant posts have been recommended to be abolished. Cooks at the primary level are usually engaged on contracts and only work when schools are in session, leaving them ineligible for pension even after up to 20 years of service.

“We will create the post codes required to elevate 716 cooks and assistant cooks in our school system from contract employment to permanent employment. Cooks and assistant cooks in our school system are people too. If they are full-time, put in a full week’s work every week; they deserve to be pensionable too,” Dr Clarke told the House.

In the meantime, just under 2,000 sanitation workers are to have their positions made permanent in the upcoming fiscal year. This includes side men, drivers, landfill workers, sweepers, mechanics, and enforcement officers, among others, attached to the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA).

“We have a duty to give them justice,” the finance minister stressed. “No financial institution will take them seriously. They can’t sustain any savings. As you put dung likkle money, you contract end, you use it up, you bruk. Dem call you back a work and as you quint you eye the contract done again. It is not right.” At the same time, he promised that the Holness Administration will ensure security of tenure for 1,754 doctors in the public health system, which is three times the establishment of 509. “More than two-thirds are on evergreen consistently renewable contracts. Eighty-per cent of medical doctors in the public service are therefore on contracts that have to be periodically renewed. After all those years in medical school, the vast majority of our doctors do not have security of tenure. The sub-optimal arrangement of doctors in the public service on contract work for extended periods of time will be brought to an end by this Government,” he stated.

Dr Clarke pointed out that there are public bodies where every employee is on a short-term contract, a situation which the Government intends to fix in phases, under the reform of contract work in the public sector programme.