appears to have called for the resignation of the Permanent Secretary for Education, Dr. Marion Robinson. Sen. Scott has made the call in the wake of an audit of Bermuda's education system carried out by Professor William Poston which found significant deficiencies in the system.

Sen. Scott is quoted as having said: "If any of the major companies, whether international or local, had received a report like this, the CEO of the company would have been called in and asked to submit his or her resignation.

I would hope that Government would look at the Minister (Jerome Dill) and the Permanent Secretary. We need to look at how we can bring together better accountability.'' We agree entirely with Senator Scott's views on Dr. Robinson but it seems unfair to ask Government to look at Jerome Dill. As a new Minister, he commissioned this audit which is basically a report on a system over which he had just taken control. The problems were not of Mr. Dill's making although they certainly do not look good for his two predecessors as Minister of Education, Dr. Clarence Terceira and Mr. Gerald Simons. To his credit, Mr.

Dill instituted this audit to give himself the analysis and the information to deal with problems. As we see it, he is the solution and not the problem.

Dr. Robinson's situation is very different. She has been in power at the Ministry of Education for a very long time, too long in our view, and is known to have kept close control of the ministry, therefore she must accept responsibility for the criticisms contained in the audit.

As Sen. Scott says, in the private sector, resignations would be asked for.

Far too often in Bermuda we shrug off problems in the public sector, excuse people as "civil servants'' and simply go on. That compounds the problems.

The time has come in Bermuda to stop regarding civil servants as "sacred cows'' and to begin to apply the standards of the private sector. While it is true that civil servants are there to apply the policies of the Government, it is not the policy of any Government to accept poor administration -- and the responsibility for administration lies with the civil servants. More often than not we complain but we do nothing. Then we wonder why there are ministries and departments of our Government which are simply accepted as being inefficient.

When civil servants are criticised Cabinet Ministers and various other politicians leap to their defence. They have to but they do not always want to. The Progressive Labour Party often defends a civil servant but gives every impression of doing so based on whether or not it thinks that civil servant supports the PLP or if they think there is political mileage to be gained.

That is nowhere more evident than in PLP criticisms of the Police Service. The Civil Service, of course, should be free of that kind of politicking.

The independence of the Civil Service should be maintained. But civil servants should not be retained in office no matter what at the expense of well run public business.