The Chasm between 'Officers' and 'Assistants'

Some months after my entry into UNICEF, the staff association held a meeting to protest the induction of two new National Officers, albeit on short term contracts for the emergency relief programmes in the drought-hit or flooded areas of some North Indian states [yes, as often in India, both existed almost side by side!]. The grievance was that no senior programme assistants had been selected for these posts, which, instead, had been filled by outsiders. Listening to them, I was struck by one point – every time, said some of the staff, when they complained to top management about such happenings, they were told they had no field and direct programming experience, despite the sr. programme assts being the constant factor when international staff came and went after a few years. Many had in fact tutored raw recruits among the latter.
I asked the assembly why they had not protested when I, also an outsider, had been recruited. They pointed out that my post was more a 'technical' one that needed specific planning, monitoring and evaluation experience and they did not have that. But general programming was something they did know about even if they had not independently handled any but the routine or short-term parts of it [e.g. When the officer was on leave or travel]. Anyway, a delegation went to the RD with their protest, and he promised to set up a committee to look into their grievances and suggest remedies for the future at least [as the two new staff were already on the job]. I was surprised to find I was one of this committee of three, and went to him asking how I could be of any help in this matter, being so new to unicef. He said that was not a problem – he had a hunch it would be good to have me on it. In the midst of the committee delibrations, one night, I penned a confidential letter to the RD basically saying that an organisation like unicef should have a balance between promotions and recruitment from outside, and further, that it should have a systematic training policy and system for local support staff, as otherwise the vicious cycle of none of them, however otherwise good, would have had the field/programming experience to go up the ladder when a vacancy came up. A few years later, the position would still be the same! I added that such training should be both the desk type and on the field – basically through in-house apprenticeships after some workshops etc.
Grun called me to his office the next day and said,'See, I told you I had a hunch about you!. But why have you marked it confidential? It should be shared with the other committee members and all senior staff'. I told him I did not want to stir up any hornet's nest and so had marked it confidential but it was up to him to decide to make the suggestions as public as he wanted.
In any case, the new policy did come through, perhaps not universally as it depended on individual section heads and other officers delegating and training their programme assistants in a systematic way. But it also led to another major development when the new Regional Planning Officer, Satish Prabasi, and I took up the task of conducting a series of workshops on Programme Preparation or Planning, Evaluation and Monitoring [PEM] for all programme staff. This was to be supported by HQ Planning Section both in the form of resource persons and funds. I guess it was never stated which level of staff would be included, but immediately, our Planning Section was approached by some senior support staff asking if they could be included in these courses.
Actually, the idea of such training courses had their roots in both the annual 'staff seminars' that the training section of HQ conducted among promising young officers and in the drive of the HQ planning section that wanted to instill more systematic PEM concepts and practices in all Unicef offices. I had just been to one of the staff seminars and this sounded a good way to put into practice what I preached as a committee member some time before. I think in all we had three such courses of 3-4 days duration in some exotic location and I do believe the trainees would agree that they were on the whole interesting and refreshing and educational even if gruelling at times. Soon after came another proof of all these various attempts at training programme staff when a number of them made the grade and got selected to both national and international officer posts [Quite a few made a mark in such assignments too].