Analyst: Bigger portfolio doesn’t mean more work for ministers

JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath says the ex­pand­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties placed on some min­is­ters did not nec­es­sar­i­ly trans­late in­to a sig­nif­i­cant­ly heav­ier work­load, since much of the tech­ni­cal and ad­min­is­tra­tive work of Gov­ern­ment was car­ried out by pub­lic of­fi­cers.

Re­spond­ing to the re­align­ment of Cab­i­net re­spon­si­bil­i­ties made by the Prime Min­is­ter, Ra­goonath ex­plained that min­is­ters were pri­mar­i­ly re­spon­si­ble for pol­i­cy di­rec­tion, while tech­ni­cal ad­vis­ers, as­sis­tants and oth­er staff han­dled the day-to-day work of their re­spec­tive min­istries.

“Min­is­ters don’t re­al­ly do the work. Min­is­ters are ad­vised and min­is­ters make pol­i­cy de­ci­sions and so on. They’re not go­ing out there to do any ma­jor, any­thing by them­selves.”

He point­ed out that the same tech­ni­cal staff re­spon­si­ble for the var­i­ous ar­eas would con­tin­ue car­ry­ing out that work, even when re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for a port­fo­lio shift­ed to an­oth­er min­is­ter.

“So when you talk about re­align­ment and min­is­ters get­ting a lot more port­fo­lios and more re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and so on, it’s just that the same staff who were do­ing it be­fore prob­a­bly will con­tin­ue to do it. It’s just that they’re now re­port­ing to a dif­fer­ent min­is­ter, that’s all.”

Ra­goonath ac­knowl­edged that, on pa­per, Land and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sad­dam Ho­sein had con­sid­er­ably more re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“Yes, on pa­per, he has a lot more on his port­fo­lio to be in charge of.”

Ra­goonath al­so point­ed to the in­ter­con­nect­ed na­ture of Gov­ern­ment min­istries, with poli­cies in one area of­ten hav­ing im­pli­ca­tions for sev­er­al oth­ers.

“No min­istry op­er­ates in a si­lo. Every min­istry is in­ter­con­nect­ed with oth­er min­istries. And every pol­i­cy per­spec­tive is in­ter­re­lat­ed.”

He ex­plained that mov­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties be­tween min­istries could al­low re­lat­ed ar­eas of pol­i­cy to in­ter­act more close­ly.

An­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said the re­align­ment is in keep­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter’s first term in of­fice and fol­lows her gov­ern­ing ethos of stream­lin­ing poli­cies.

“The align­ment that the Prime Min­is­ter is do­ing is not in­con­sis­tent to Kam­la 1.0. And I have an ap­pre­ci­a­tion for Kam­la 1.0’s con­sis­ten­cy in re­align­ment. It’s not about reshuf­fling; it’s easy to reshuf­fle peo­ple.”

He added: “Her pur­pose for re­align­ing was to en­sure that there was to en­sure that gov­ern­ment ser­vices is not left be­hind.”

He said the at­ten­tion to land man­age­ment is one main rea­son for the re­align­ment and with her Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters, par­tic­u­lar­ly Sad­dam Ho­sein, hav­ing a le­gal back­ground, the added re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to him, makes prac­ti­cal sense.

“We re­al­ly and tru­ly have al­ways need­ed to start look­ing at gov­ern­ment from a re­al gov­er­nance per­spec­tive as it aligns to get­ting things done in a process ori­en­ta­tion so that one in­ter­sects with the oth­er.”