Feeding off the crumbs from the master’s table

Aug 23, 2015 Features / Columnists, My Column

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It’s not often that I comment on things like what people earn, because it is much more interesting to talk about things in life—things like days gone by, the economic system and perhaps a bit of politics. However, what has been happening these past few years has got to be talked about. I see too many of my countrymen struggling to make ends meet and to raise their children at the same time.
Until recently I could have sworn that no public servant would earn less than $50,000 a month. That sum would barely cover the light bill, phone bill, and possibly rent if the home is in rural Guyana. That means that there is nothing left for food, transportation and clothing. There are other incidentals, but many of those should remain wishful thinking. Entertainment is out.
Yet it was only this year that the public servant at the bottom of the scale was able to earn that sum. At the same time there were people doing the same job who were paid so much more. These would have been the contract employees whom the government employed in its quest to cripple the public service union.
A few years ago when the public servants sought a pay increase the government said that any significant increase would impact the wage bill. The result was that many public servants held out their hand to clients. Policemen were chief among the set. Some set up roadblocks and fleeced motorists, while others were brave enough to stop some motorists and either ask for or demand a raise.
Sometimes, the members of the public would complain about the treatment they get when they go to public offices. At the same time it explained why the public service was almost denuded of proper and qualified staff.
At the other end of the scale there were people who were earning what could only be described as monstrous salaries. Some of these salaries could pay at least one hundred low level public servants each month. And the fact that they all have to face the same prices in the shop did not make the public servant any happier.
This past week, a remigrant letter writer who signs his name as GHK Lall (at one time some people thought that he was Glenn Lall) commented in the pages of the Stabroek News about the salaries some people received.
Of course, this has been a talking point of mine for some time. I recalled uncovering the salary being paid to a retiree who is a pensioner in the Ministry of Finance. The retiree, Clyde Roopchand, was being paid $1.2 million a month.
When this was uncovered he became angry and in a telephone conversation, said to me that he was now getting something. I also remembered talking to former president Bharrat Jagdeo at a press conference about super salaries. I spoke about the US$15,000 a month that was paid to Mr Kobe Frimpong.
Jagdeo duly informed that the money was coming from an external agency and that the Guyana Government had nothing to do with that. I demurred. But soon after, I learnt of others in the society who were getting almost as much.
The Commissioner General of the Guyana Revenue Authority was getting US$10,000 a month and that this was tax-free. I consoled myself by saying that he was being paid handsomely to prevent him from dipping his fingers into the coffers of the Guyana Revenue Authority which was collecting huge sums of money.
But what could I say about the salary paid to Shaik Baksh when he headed the Guyana Water Authority, a company that needed support from the public coffers? There were others, some qualified and some certainly unqualified by any standards.
The change in Government brought other revelations. When Ash Deonarine foolishly arrogated to himself $27.8 million in back pay over two years, I got an insight into his salary at Guyana Power and Light Inc.
Then the bombshell came when I learnt that the head, my friend Bharat Dindyal, was being paid a whopping US$30,000 per month – I was stunned. And I was not the only one. GHK Lall wrote, “I learn of the latest outrage regarding pay packages and the blood boils. I calm myself down to say in all seriousness that nobody (nobody) in Guyana is worth six million (dollars) a month, or for that matter anywhere close to two (million dollars) for the same period.”
Then the floodgates opened and the news kept coming about the super salaries that people were receiving. I was around when the late President Cheddi Jagan sent Steve Bovell packing because he was receiving a salary of $140,000 a month, back in 1992.
That was US$1,600 a month, not a measly sum by any standard.
I expected that salaries would have remained at a reasonable level taking inflation into consideration. But greed is something that lies in every human breast. Greed has people going after money although they have more than they could spend. This is different from aspiring to greater heights in cases where employees seek promotion and better pay.
But the madness was far from over. The then President Jagdeo decided to fashion a pension package for a former president. He settled upon a humongous sum, far removed from what his predecessors received.  His basic pension stands at $1.6 million per month. It included another million dollars at least for living expenses.
Any president would get the same pension whether he served one term or three. The public servant needed to work 33 years and four months to get a pension calculated according to some formula.
After all those years, people who retired needed to go find some other job because the pension was enough to ensure that they remained at the level of a mendicant.
This caused GHK Lall to write, “How does a leader observe the plight of the people and fix his pension at levels not only offensive, but which should be made an offence?”
In my mind’s eye I see public servants smiling over their pay increase this month and I shake my head at the total disregard the previous government displayed for everyone other than friends, party members and party supporters.

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