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Minister Westford should try living on a nurse’s salary for a month – Nagamootoo
“Minister Jennifer Westford should try living on a nurse’s salary for one month and then she would be able to accurately report on whether the five per cent increase in salary is enough.”
Public Service Minister, Jennifer Westford
This was the response of Vice Chairman of the Alliance for Change (AFC), Moses Nagamootoo, to the Public Service Minister’s retort that workers should be happy about the proposed five per cent increase in salaries.
According to Nagamootoo, the Ministers of Government have become accustomed to “an elitist lifestyle to the point that they are unable to relate to the ordinary man”.
He suggested also that the money approved in Parliament was for an across the board payment and if the Government is worried about affordability, it should take into account the additional allowances that the elite public servants benefit from.
Speaking in the capacity of a former Minister of Government, he highlighted that the custom is that if a Minister does not own a home, one is rented for him/her, with the taxpayers ‘footing’ the bill. “Nurses don’t get that.”
Nagamootoo also pointed out that “public servants don’t get lump sum allowances for travel, nor are they provided with maids, chauffeurs and gardeners all paid for by the state.”
“The policeman or woman do not get this,” said Nagamootoo, who opined that Ministers have grown too accustomed to living a privileged lifestyle to understand what a five per cent increase would mean for the ordinary public servants such as nurses and police.
Minister Westford in an invited comment this past weekend had said that she was unaware of the protests and if in fact there was any, then it is a right of citizens.
According to the Minister, she is also unaware of any plans to review the proposed five per cent increase.
“That is not how a government operates,” the Minister asserted. “Government is not going to review the five per cent proposal because of any protests.”
She then noted that the workers should, in fact, be “happy with the increase.”
“The workers need to understand that Government is proposing what it can afford.”
AFC Vice Chairman, Moses Nagamootoo
Minister Westford said that the workers should be happy because Guyana is “one of the few countries in the world that has been offering salary increases to its public servants”.
She said that Government has been consistently giving its public servants increases on an annual basis.
Westford stressed that if one were to take a look at several countries in the Caribbean and further afield, workers are in fact being laid off and some have had to take pay cuts in order to keep their jobs.
“We can’t give what we don’t have,” she said while urging that workers be more understanding of the prevailing economy not just in Guyana, but across the world.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon, had announced that Government will be giving public service workers an increase in salary for the year 2013. This payout, he said, would be retroactive and is not likely to exceed five per cent.
The announcement has since been met with a spate of protests, initially by nurses and the Guyana Public Service Union.
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