FOR islanders who want to have confidence in the process of government, last week’s revelations that an estimated £500,000 has been wasted on paying a health professional not to work for two years while getting in someone else to cover for them at two or three times the cost, will be approaching the last straw.

If for no other reason, the lack of response from Health and Social Services and the Policy Council indicates that government truly does not care about how it treats its staff – or how it wastes taxpayers’ money.

But the implications of the episode are rather more sinister than the headlines might indicate.

In washing its hands of the affair, the council’s spokesman said that the issue was a matter between the employer and the employee.

While there might be doubt about just who actually is a public sector employee’s legal boss, the buck currently stops with the Policy Council.

It is one reason why a deputy chief executive was appointed and also the reason why a very experienced head of human resources was recruited from the private sector and from off island.

The impetus for that was in part a devastating, but softly written, report from Dr Graham Robinson who was asked by the Policy Council to review the arrangements through which the council on behalf of the States discharged its role as the employer of civil servants and its wider HR responsibilities.

So by its own admission, the council has a central role in this HSSD ‘full pay for no work’ fiasco but now claims that it has nothing to do with it.

It really will not do.

Dr Robinson highlighted the tendency in government to avoid difficult issues in the hope that they would resolve themselves, and this case has every such hallmark.

The report also criticised the absence of high level professional and political oversight of the council’s HR function as a major weakness also requiring urgent rectification. That was in February 2008.

The second anniversary of the suspension passed last week and yet Policy Council still pretends that it has no involvement.

No wonder people believe Guernsey is rudderless.