In his inaugural address at the annual Public Service Week Thanksgiving Service held in Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Godwin Friday has delivered a landmark dual-message speech that confronts longstanding systemic challenges in the country’s public sector. The newly sworn-in premier, whose administration took office on November 28, openly acknowledged that thousands of public servants across the nation are currently forced to carry out their duties in severely deficient, even life-endangering work environments — and called for shared accountability to drive progress.
Friday opened by reframing the core identity of public service, pushing back against harmful cultural narratives rooted in the nation’s history of slavery that have tied service to the stigma of servitude. Speaking to the gathering of public officers under the event’s theme “Transforming Public Institutions: Advancing Innovation, Participation and Inclusion”, he emphasized that public service is fundamentally a calling to support fellow citizens. “We are called to serve, and it’s incumbent upon us to do our very best in whatever our roles are,” he told attendees. “Service means being a help to your neighbour, to your friend, to the people who have a right to expect us to do our best for them.”
He lauded public servants as the backbone of the country’s economy, describing them as some of the “best educated, most talented, hardworking, dedicated people in St. Vincent and the Grenadines”. Friday noted that the consistent work of public employees lays the foundational framework that enables private sector growth and broader national economic activity.
Tying the country’s ongoing economic challenges — including heavy national debt and persistent fiscal pressures — to public sector performance, the prime minister argued that boosting productivity within government agencies is a critical step to improving national financial health. “Productivity is what creates whatever the surplus is, the increase in wealth that helps to deal with all of those things. That can be done within the public service as well, because you set the context of what everybody else does out there,” he explained.
Friday urged public officers to eliminate unnecessary delays that stall services for citizens and private businesses, warning that bureaucratic procrastination acts as a dead weight on the entire national economy. He acknowledged that frontline workers often face overwhelming frustration when tackling persistent, unresolved problems, but stressed that unprofessional or dismissive interactions with the public fail to meet the obligations of public service. Echoing a prior appeal from Deputy Prime Minister and Public Service Minister St. Clair Leacock, Friday called on all public employees to “lift your game”, saying, “Let us decide that we are going to do better. Imagine if all of us decide to lift our game.”
He reinforced that citizens accessing public services are not asking for special favors, but exercising the rights they have earned as taxpayers, and are inherently entitled to high-quality, timely support. Framing the work of public service in both moral and spiritual terms, he added that each workday represents both a blessing and a core obligation to serve the public good.
In some of his most sharply critical remarks, the prime minister turned to the dire physical working conditions he has personally observed across government facilities since taking office. “I’ve seen it. I’ve seen enough to know that we have to put our best foot forward, as well, as permanent secretaries, as ministers, as the people who are in charge of the various offices that you inhabit,” he said.
He specifically called out the dilapidated housing at the decommissioned police training school in Old Montrose, where serving officers still reside. He described the conditions at the site as “terrible”, noting that plans to demolish and rehabilitate the complex were first drafted back in 2016, but have languished for years without progress. Quoting John Lennon’s famous line that “life is what happens when you’re making plans”, Friday criticized the prolonged delay: “Those plans have been under work since 2016 and people are still required to come to work and to give of their best when we tell them, by the conditions in which we ask them to work, that we don’t value you. That is not fair, it’s not right. And it bothered me.”
The prime minister stressed that poor conditions are not isolated to the police service, adding that police facilities are simply the worst affected. Even the central administrative complex that houses the prime minister’s own offices, he noted, falls far short of acceptable standards. Friday went on to confirm that many workplaces across the public sector pose direct risks to employee health: “It’s a health hazard to have people working in mouldy buildings, and that’s happening all over the public service. It’s demeaning to tell somebody to work out of a closet rather than an office, to tell them to work in the corridors because we don’t have space for you.”
Against this backdrop, Friday issued a formal public commitment to partner with public servants to improve their working environments, even amid the government’s tight fiscal constraints. “We are going to be a partner with you to ensure that we do our very best within the limited resources we have to provide better conditions to you, so that you can do your work and so that you can be productive,” he said, adding that “money isn’t everything” when it comes to meaningful reform.
The prime minister announced his administration will pursue a wide range of creative solutions to upgrade public facilities, and signaled he is willing to face political criticism for the steps his government will take. “I don’t care what people say. I’m going to do it, because I know what we’re doing is … going to help you, it’s going to help the country, it’s going to help everybody,” he said.
Addressing potential critics and naysayers, he closed by reaffirming the shared goal of progress: “For those who are naysayers and want to find fault and pick faults for everything, watch the result and you will see that we are going to deliver for you as public servants, and we ask you, lift your game. Let us deliver for the people of this country. They deserve nothing less.”
