Latest update April 18th, 2025 8:12 AM
Quoting W.E. B Du Bois to justify the ten percent salary increase
Dear Editor;
I join the debate on the increase in salaries for public servants, with a sense of patriotism, called the last refuge of a scoundrel by Samuel Johnson. I also feel obliged – which really is a code word for making a choice–to write as a conscientious citizen of Guyana on salaries for public servant.
Honourable Minister Winston Jordon in his maiden budget speech delivered in 2015, as extracted from an article published in Stabroek News (SN) dated August 11, 2015 stated: “Mr. Speaker, I wish to announce an increase in the minimum basic salary of each public servant to $50,000, effective July 1, 2015. This translates to a 26.4 percent increase for those still earning the old minimum wage of $39,540 and 17.1 percent for over 4,000 public servants earning the current minimum wage of $42,703,”
“Since the bulk of the public servants earn $100,000 and below, these are substantial increases, more than was promised to these categories of workers. These increases are payable to workers who were employed on or before January 1, 2015,”
With approximately 80% or 25,000 public servants earning below $100,000 out of the estimated 31,250 public servants in Guyana, it is my belief that the Coalition Government substantively delivered to the 80 percenters or public servants working for less than $100,000 per month, a fulfillment of the campaign promise of 20% increase to public servants.
The table below extracted from the Stabroek News article referenced above; illustrates that the 80 percenters on average received at least a minimum of 20% increase, with effect from July 1, 2015.
The above development should not be ignored as salary increases are being negotiated for public servants in 2016. However, what is needed in the 2016 salary negotiations are deliberations with a biased focus on those public servants earning below $100,000 per month. It is disingenuous to conflate the 10% currently being offered to the 20% campaign promise that has to a great extent been delivered on and implemented by President Granger’s administrationin 2015.
From the statements in his letters to the Editors of Stabroek News and Kaieteur News, on Sunday, August 28, 2016, Mr. Tacuma Ogunseye, the fair, fearless and well informed writer and WPA member; a Guyanese who in my opinion looks at the big picture,wrote; “It is my considered opinion that an increase of 20 to 25% for low income workers was the least the government could have offered, given all the known challenges it faces. Such an offer even though it would have disappointed some workers and their leadership, would have resulted in the broad masses of workers willingly accepting the compromise offer and doing so with dignity.”
I concur with Mr. Ogunseye and take this opportunity to point out that a 25% increase for the 80% of Public Servants who earn below $100,000 per month, with Guyana having an income tax threshold equivalent to the minimum wage level of $50,000 per month, essentially results in 30% of the increase being returned to the Treasury – as illustrated below:
| Current Base Salary | Gross % Increase | New Base Salary | Gross Increase | Increase Income Tax Deduction | Take Home % Increase |
| 75,000 | 25% | 93,750 | 17,500 | 5,250 | 16.3% |
We should always strive to do better than our predecessors, not for the sake of casting them in a bad light, but to improve upon what exists and to be true to human nature.
I close with a quote from W.E.B. Du Bois, used by Finance Minister, Honourable Winston DaCosta Jordan at the ending of his budget speech on August 10, 2015:“Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow. Today is the seed time, now are the hours of work, and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime.”
Nigel Hinds
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