Several Permanent Secretaries did not prepare Transition Briefs for the Dickon Mitchell-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) when it took office following the June 2022 general election in which it defeated the then ruling New National Party (NNP) of Keith Mitchell.

A well-placed source told THE NEW TODAY that some of the Permanent Secretaries claimed that they were new to the Ministry and had no prior information or knowledge about its activities.

She said the new administration made an error in appointing Transition Leads after the changes in ministerial portfolios after the election and appointing the new ministers to their positions.

The issue of the work of the Transition Leads has come into sharp focus following reports that the new government was not able to get any briefs on taking office on the issue of Oil & Gas following the signing of an agreement between the former rulers and a group of Russian investors trading under the name of Global Petroleum Group (GPG).

In delivering the Throne Speech in Parliament on September 26, Governor General Dame Cecile La Grenade announced that “very little records can be found anywhere within the government and our technocrats within the ministries and departments have very little information on this (oil & gas matter.”

“In essence upon assuming office, my government was not provided with any Transition Reports or any files on Grenada’s legal or contractual obligations or Grenada’s progress in relation to its Oil and Gas reserves,” said Dame Cecil in the speech that is normally written by the government.

Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell has announced the setting up of an Advisory Committee headed by former Finance Minister Nazim Burke to try and unravel “the mystery” of the oil & gas arrangement.

According to the well-placed source, the person who served as Cabinet Secretary at the time of the election, Ruth Rouse should have been tasked with the responsibility of getting all the Transition Briefs prepared from the outgoing Permanent Secretaries to present to the new administration.

She said that whoever was the Transition lead for the Ministry of Finance as appointed by new Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell was the one who had to ask about the Oil & Gas issue as that was part of the mandate of the person.

“…That was part of the Transition’s Lead portfolio to review the Briefs and to ask further questions. So the Transition Lead was supposed to enquire there and then from the PS about Oil & Gas. When you get the Transition Brief and if you need further clarification then you should obtain it.”

According to the source who served at the Permanent Secretary level before retirement, it is not unexpected to hear a PS indicating that “they don’t know or that they were not handling it (a particular subject matter).

She recalled an encounter with a senior public officer who was supposed to be in charge of an issue and when she questioned him, he told her: “That was handled over his head, so things were happening over public officers’ heads.”

The retired senior public officer told THE NEW TODAY that although several public officers were known to be aligned to the NNP regime, the fact of the matter is that the then rulers did not trust anybody with certain sensitive files like Oil & Gas.

She also said that there are times as a Permanent Secretary something happened and the registry is then approached for the files and they cannot produce it.

“The system has crashed,” she remarked.

The retiree sees nothing but “a major work to put it back on track” in order to rectify the situation with government files and that “you have people in some of these positions (Registry) who do not understand it.”

She also lamented the fact that clerical officer promotion courses no longer take place in which focus used to be placed on filing and registration.

“Now nobody is doing that – everybody comes and puts in their own system on how they believe things should be filed and they never had any training,” she remarked.

The former PS acknowledged that the NNP of Keith Mitchell has seemingly “mashed up the public service for their own purpose.”