— labels claims of PPP reversing increases as “lies”
— concerned thousands will lose jobs to sustain salary increases
Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday described claims by the APNU/AFC that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) will reverse the recently announced salary increases for public servants as “pure lies”.
During his weekly press conference, Jagdeo addressed the pay-hike announced by President David Granger on Wednesday and shortly after, a social media post was shared stating that “Jagdeo today warned public servants that the tax-free, retroactive salary increases announced by the caretaker coalition government are illegal and that any public servant who accepts any salary increase will face the full force of the law if the PPP wins the March 2, 2020 elections…”
This was brought to his attention during the press conference and the Opposition Leader immediately addressed the post, clarifying that he never said that “PPP will reverse all salary increases for 2019 and public servants will be required to repay the increases if the PPP wins”.
To the contrary, Jagdeo urged public servants to collect the increases which is a routine annual increase that was catered for in the 2019 Budget.
“This is the lie that goes on; this is social media. I said the public servants should collect the money. It was budgeted since last year. This is nothing new, they should get their money. It is pure lies and this is coming straight from APNU,” he contended.
The Opposition Leader went on to explain that what he warned against, in fact, is new contracts being signed by the caretaker government and issued to their cronies.
On the other hand, the Opposition Leader expressed concerns that government might move to dismiss thousands of public servants in order to facilitate the recently announced salary increases.
Government’s announcement of pay hikes comes on the heels of Finance Minister Winston Jordan saying earlier this week that some 15,000 persons who are overcrowding the public treasury will have to be fired in order to pay better wages and salary to public servants.
“I have more than a suspicious, more than an intuition; I have some information that they plan to make some of these increases sustainable ‘cause they know the increases can’t be sustainable… that after the elections, they plant to terminate, to downsize the public sector by 15 to 20 thousands. He said it can’t be done immediately but that’s their plan,” Jagdeo said.
He pointed out that this situation mirrors that relating to the sugar industry when the PPP had warned the country that the coalition would close the estates but the APNU/AFC denied this.
“They said that no sugar worker would lose their job and just after the elections, they started [the closures]. Just months after Wales was closed. So this is a promise, basically, to downsize the public sector by 15 to 20 thousands in the future…” the Opposition Leader posited.
Nevertheless, Jagdeo noted that the coalition will not be there to implement this plan and when the PPP gets into office, it will be create thousands of job opportunities instead of dismissing people.
He further stated that while he is happy that the public servants will be getting a pay hike, a bulk of the increases is going towards ministers and top government officials. He went on to dismiss claims of a 75 per cent growth in employment cost under the APNU/AFC coalition.
In fact, the Opposition Leader highlighted that the only thing that grew under the coalition is their expenses in areas such as salaries, dietary, allowances, travel per diems (both domestic and overseas), entertainments and so on…
On Wednesday, the Head of State revealed that the minimum wage for public servants would be increased to $70,000 from $64,220 per month. Persons in this category will be receiving $69,336 this December, a nine per cent increase from the current wages and is extended to sweeper-cleaners in the public education system.
Other public servants earning between $100,000 and under $1 million will receive an 8.5 per cent increase; and those earning less than $100,000 will receive a nine per cent increase in their salaries.
Cabinet also approved increases in several stipends.
