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PM fails to justify Jagdeo’s pension
Trotman questions draw comparison with civil servants’ wage
While he defended it as non-discriminatory, the hefty presidential pension that President Bharrat Jagdeo will receive, braced Prime Minister Samuel Hinds in a corner last evening at a forum organized by the Methodist Church.
That forum featured representatives of the three main parties contesting the November 28 polls.
When he faced the heat, he declared that “Coolie man President, Black man President getting the same thing.”
Hinds, who served as President from March to December 1997, is himself in line for the pension, which has been a major source of contention between the Alliance for Change (AFC) and the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C).
The AFC has repeated that President Jagdeo will be taking home $3 million as a pension when he demits office this December.
But the Office of the President has claimed that Mr Jagdeo will actually be receiving about one-third of that amount, therefore about $1 million per month. Observers have noted that even if Mr Jagdeo is taking home $1 million tax free, with all the other benefits, including a waiver of electricity, telephone and water charges, free medical treatment, full personal security, the provision of motor vehicles, and others, the benefits could indeed go beyond $3 million.
Raphael Trotman, Lance Carberry and Prime Minister Samuel Hinds at the forum organized by the Methodist Church yesterday.
The audience did not buy Hinds’ explanation that the real wage of civil servants has increased since 1992, even though he quoted figures. He said that when the PPP/C took power in 1992, public servants were getting $2,546, but today that figure has increase to $33,207.
After persistent murmuring from the crowd, Hinds tried to further explain that even if other factors were taken into account they would make that increase seem less than plausible. In the long run the amount of “absolute money” in the hands of public servants would now be two to four times the amount it was in 1992.
Hinds told the crowd that a living wage cannot be legislated and that what the government does is to share what has been produced, and it is there that he landed in hot water.
The Prime Ministerial Candidate of the FAC Raphael Trotman then rebutted in asking how come the living wage is what it is for public servants and the President would be taking home a pension of $3 million.
It was then that Hinds tried another defense by saying that the pension would be non-discriminatory.
Lance Carberry, of A Partnership for National Unity, drew the applause of the audience when he said that the question should not be about how much public servants wages have increased, but whether what they receive now is a livable wage.
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