CMC:

Prime Minister-designate Bruce Golding says public-sector employees who perform well in their jobs should have no fear of being booted on to the breadline under his Government, but warned non-performing political appointees that their positions were not secure.

"Those persons who are in functional positions and are carrying out their functions have no need to worry. There are persons who occupy posts within the Government and are assigned to various Government agencies and who don't even know the shape of the building where they are assigned; we are going to have to look at these," he told the Caribbean Media Corporation in an exclusive interview Friday.

"Not only are these a drain on the public purse, but in a sense, people are being paid to do political work. I think they understand that that sort of Christmas season is over and they are not going to be replaced by persons of a different colour either, because I believe it's wrong.

"I don't believe we should be packing on to Government payroll persons to do partisan political work," Golding said.

The Prime Minister-designate, who will be sworn in on Tuesday, said he would, for example, retain the services of noted public servant Kingsley Thomas, who was appointed by Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to deal with the recovery efforts following the recent passage of Hurricane Dean.

thomas to stay

"Kingsley Thomas was appointed by the Government to head that national reconstruction programme and I intend that he will remain there," he said.

At the same time, Golding has refused to drop even a hint about who will make up his Cabinet. However, he intimated it would be no larger than the current Cabinet.

"The Cabinet has to be moderate in size," he said. "One thing you will appreciate is that the Constitution prescribes a minimum. The Constitu-tion says that the Cabinet shall consist of the Prime Minister and no fewer than 11 ministers.

"There are particular areas of focus and emphasis that Jamaica has to countenance. The present Cabinet is 14. We intend to be disciplined. It's part of what will be consuming my attention over the weekend."

He said the guiding principle that will inform the make-up of his Cabinet is that of ensuring that ministers have the capacity to do the job.

"What is important is capacity; to ensure that the people who are assigned to particular areas bring to the management of that particular portfolio a particular aptitude, a particular knowledge, a particular quality of leadership because so much of this involves policy leadership," he said.

"It's one thing to devise policies, another thing to ensue that the energy that needs to be there to drive that policy is there. Much of that is going to ultimately rest on the minister seeing to that. One of the things I'm going to be putting a lot of emphasis on is delivery. If we say we are going to do something, we must do it."

Golding's Jamaica Labour Party picked up 33 seats to the PNP's 27 in the September 3 general election to fill the 60-member House of Representatives.