I think the APNU-AFC Government has money for me. I need it

Oct 09, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I honestly cannot look a Cabinet Minister in the face and tell him/her that he/she doesn’t deserve a salary increase. I know in my heart that Ministerial salaries are horrible. But there is a ‘but’. And so are people in the general public sector. In my testimony to the Commission of Inquiry into the Public Service last Tuesday, I used the word, “immense” while recommending wage and salary increases in the public sector.
When my contract was terminated at UG in January 2012, I was earning $180,000 monthly and this was with qualifications including certification in the doctoral programme at the University of Toronto with only the thesis to be submitted.
Yet with those qualifications and after 26 consecutive years, I left UG with $180,000 monthly. The point is that not only Ministers and Parliamentarians, but public sector workers in general are in exigent need of immediate salary increases.
The APNU and AFC seniors are gone from the streets. They are in office now where they are very busy. It means when they want to find out what political vibes are going down in the communities, in the restaurants, in the watering holes, on the streets, in the markets, they have to talk to those political activists who are still on the streets.
I have not spoken with any Minister of Government, with one exception, for more than five minutes since the APNU-AFC regime took office. That exception is Basil Williams. He sat at the table where I was dining during a brunch sponsored by the Burnham Foundation.
We talked for more than half an hour. The discussion involved serious political angles but the conversation was in front of others including Dr. David Hinds, Aubrey Norton and Vincent Alexander.
Here is a list of Ministers I have seen in person since they became Ministers and the time the conversation lasted. With Rupert Roopnaraine, it lasted for five minutes and it was a topic that was very serious. The conversation was done in front of Vincent Alexander who was at the same table; Khemraj Ramjattan – about two minutes at the wake of Nigel Hughes’s mom; Keith Scott – about one minute at the funeral service of Nigel Hughes’s mom; David Patterson – about two minutes on the Public Buildings balcony; Moses Nagamootoo – about one minute in front the office of the AFC.
That’s it. I have had no personal chat with any Minister of Government on any political issue or anything political at all on a one-to-one basis. I wrote Minister Bulkan to formally request ministerial assistance for a public servant that was within the law without the input of a personal favour. He facilitated the request.
If and when the people I know in the leadership of the coalition government dialogue with me and solicit a response from me on those political vibes, I will automatically respond with two spontaneous sprouts.
First, the ministerial salary increase is very unpopular with the masses. Secondly, people think that Ministers are slower to act with bureaucratic stamps on paper and signature on paper than the PPP Ministers. Two top officials who would give their lives for the PNC party, told me that the government is more than five times slower than the PPP Government.
I believe the salary increase for Ministers is overdue but it is not what you do but how you do it and the context in which it is done. First, the government is too new in office. It should have waited a little longer. Perhaps drop it on the nation during Christmas time. Secondly, when it was first mentioned last month, the government backed down and said it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. People will feel the government lied.
Thirdly, coming so soon after public servants were given just five percent that was bad timing. I guess we all need money. The Office of the Ombudsman revealed that the legal advice it got from its senior counsels, was that my UG contract termination was illegal. Should I not be financially compensated?
I believe I would have got contract renewal from my Faculty and the Academic Board if I wasn’t pushed out. It meant therefore, that the subsidy of my daughter’s education at UG was removed. I had to pay for the next three years. And believe me; it was much, much more than $127,000 a year. At least that sum could be refunded to me.
I think the APNU-AFC Government owes me over what UG did to me. It needs to compensate me. I need money just like the Ministers.

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