July 28, 2000
SEAN McKIBBON
Nunatsiaq News
IQALUIT — Nunavut’s minister of human resources, Kelvin Ng, says Nunavut is planning to hire more people to fill decentralized government jobs, and that the government has set aside money to train job candidates.
"It might be that there are some individuals who are close to being capable of filling those positions," said Ng, responding to concerns raised last week by Doug Workman, president of the Nunavut Employees’ Union.
Workman said that moving territorial government jobs to small communities has prompted many of the people occupying those decentralized jobs to leave the government or transfer to other jobs.
Ng said that only 27 of the 69 decentralized positions had employees in them to begin with. Seventeen of those employees opted to either transfer to other jobs or leave the government.
As of Monday, the department had only heard from two of the remaining employees. Both are willing to decentralize.
The others have until Aug. 8 to decide. Ng says only 69 positions are being decentralized, while Workman says that 72 are supposed to be decentralized.
A grievance has been filed over a decision to not decentralize one position in the Education department and to decentralize another, Workman said.
Ng said that the government had considered taking a much more drawn out approach to decentralization through attrition as Workman had suggested, but he said there are high expectations in the 10 decentralized communities outside Iqaluit that jobs and associated economic benefits will come soon.
"We’re moving forward on this full tilt. The government has made a commitment to decentralization," Ng said.
Ng said the government is hoping to fill many of the positions with candidates from the decentralized communities.
But, he acknowledged the process might take some time. He said filling the positions slated to move into Pond Inlet, Pangnirtung and Cape Dorset this year could take anywhere from as little as three to six months to as much as a year.
Ng was confident that there would be interest among southerners in working in Nunavut temporarily as mentors for people hired who don’t have all of the skills they need to fill a position.
"That’s what we’ve found with some of the secondments so far," Ng said .
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