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APNU dubs public service five per cent salary increase meaningless
A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) has registered its dissatisfaction with the meager increase of five per cent to the wages and salaries of all public servants. The Party is therefore calling on the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/) administration to negotiate with the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) “in good faith for the benefit of the public servants of Guyana and in the interest of efficient government.”
Opposition Leader, David Granger
At a press conference held at his office, yesterday, Opposition Leader, David Granger, made known APNU’s disapproval with the increase.
He said his party strongly condemns the arbitrarily imposed five per cent increase in salaries for public servants which was announced by Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon on Wednesday last.
Granger told the media that the “paltry increase for our nurses, teachers, policemen and women, prisons and fire officers, civil servants and soldiers, signals a continuation by the PPP/C of their assault on the standard of living in denying them a living wage.”
He said that it is similar to the percentage increase that had been foisted on all public servants for well over the past decade.
Granger dubbed the increase “meaningless.” He also said that it is anything but an increase, something intended to deny public servants a good life.
Granger posited that, factors such s a high rate of inflation, high rate of income tax, high rate of Value Added Tax (VAT) of 16 per cent and National Insurance Scheme (NIS) deductions, all contributes to making the five per cent increase next to meaningless.
He said that APNU recognizes that the act is a flagrant breach of the collective bargaining agreement that the government entered into with the Guyana Public Service Union to determine, inter alia, a consensual approach to wages and salaries.
Granger said that the government ignored the GPSU call for conciliation under the agreement, even though the government is well aware that the union was asking for a 25 per cent increase in wages and salaries for its workers.
“APNU calls on the Minister of Labour, Mr. Nanda Gopaul, to invoke a compulsory arbitration process between the parties to arrive at a living wage for our public servants.”
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