The Editor, Sir:MOST of us outside Government hardly mind admitting that we seldom understand the Byzantine world of performance standards expected of Government employees.
Few of us really comprehend criteria that determine whether a worker ought to be transferred, fired, promoted, demoted or kicked upstairs.
As was so well argued earlier last week in The Gleaner by a columnist, most of us are still trying to get our minds around the issue of why a lowly zookeeper was fired because a monkey escaped, yet no one in the defence/police establishment involved in the injurious shooting and killing of innocent civilians, including children, seems destined to meet the same fate.
We are able as a general rule, though, to reflexively recognise proficient, dignified, energetic, engaged and interested service in our public servants when we see it. We are absolutely delighted, may even rejoice and merrily pay up, when we see it in the tax collector or please God, one day over at the post office.
It is that sort of reflexive favourable assessment I make, and still hold, of Attorney Paula Llewellyn, acting Senior Deputy at the Department of Public Prosecutions. Hence my chagrin on learning this week that the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr. Kent Pantry, has "recommended to the Services Commission" that she "be transferred" to one of the islands' Resident Magistrates' Courts. She is, in other words, to be kicked upstairs.
Over the last two years my appreciably large number of students in criminology heard, learned from and interacted formally and informally with Ms. Llewellyn; their highly favourable appraisal of her based on her brilliance as a communicator, zealousness as a prosecutor, and what clearly are the tangible results of her commitment to putting ordinary criminals as well as rogue cops and the well-connected behind bars.
Maybe there's something else, a whole other ballgame, than Ms. Llewellyn's abilities or effectiveness in the grand scheme and organisation of things at the DPP that we, the simple-minded public, are simply unable to understand. But shouldn't Mr. Pantry at least try us?
I am etc,
BERNARD HEADLEY (Professor)
Paculty of Social Sciences,
UWI, Mona
