GN moves 23 more jobs to Pangnirtung

The people of Pangnirtung are getting a few new neighbours.

At an exuberant community feast attended by hundreds of residents held on the evening before Canada Day, Premier Paul Okalik and Pangnirtung MLA Peter Kilabuk announced that the government of Nunavut will move 23 new territorial government jobs from Iqaluit to Pangnirtung.

It’s part of the Nunavut government’s oft-criticized, but determined, effort to decentralize government jobs to communities outside the capital.

The positions are with three Nunavut government departments. They are:

* Executive and Intergovernmental Affairs (the premier’s own department): all six jobs within the Evaluation and Statistics Division;

* Sustainable Development: Nine jobs – including positions related to fisheries and sealing;

* Education: Eight jobs – the Department of Education will decide which positions they’ll shift to Pangnirtung after finishing a reorganization effort later this summer.

In all, the government will have transferred 71 Nunavut government jobs to Pangnirtung after this latest move is finished. The Nunavut cabinet decided on it at a two-day cabinet retreat in Sanikiluaq late last month.

Like the Nunavut government’s past decentralization efforts, some positions will move to Pangnirtung with people in them, while others will lie vacant until new people are recruited. Four of the nine Sustainable Development jobs going to Pangnirtung are vacant right now.

All affected employees, after receiving formal notice of the government’s intention to move them, have 90 days in which to decide whether to move, accept another job if one is available, or take a severance package.

One affected employee, however, is already looking forward to life in Pangnirtung.

“Pangnirtung is a good place to live. I’ve lived there before, so there will be no question that it will work out,” said Jack Hicks, the head of the six-person evaluation and statistics division.

Workers at the GN statistics unit are responsible for gathering and organizing numbers related to many areas of public policy, including population, employment, and income.

Hicks said that work can be done effectively from any location, as long as there’s access to an adequate communications network.