Public Servants Wage negotiations…Finance Minister’s interventions are counterproductive

Public Servants Wage negotiations…Finance Minister’s interventions are counterproductive – GPSU

Sep 18, 2016 News

The Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) has described the recent statements by Minister of Finance,

Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan

Winston Jordan/ on the matter of public servants increase as counterproductive and potentially damaging interventions in the negotiations.
In a statement, the Union’s President Patrick Yarde said, “The Union also notes with particular concern the clear fixation by Minister Jordan with interventions in the ongoing wages, salaries and allowance negotiations in a manner that is transparently designed to compromise the negotiations and to frustrate the efforts of public servants to rise above their present difficult circumstances.”
According to Yarde, the union has noticed the perpetuation of a posture of seeming hostility to the very idea of a living wage for public servants on the part of the Minister.
Yarde said, “The seeming essence of the Finance Minister’s outburst appears to be with what he says is the “affordability” and “sustainability” of extending the government’s current pay increase offer despite the fact that the Union’s ongoing investigations seriously challenge the validity of the Minister’s claims.”
The President finds this appalling since apparently Minister Jordan did not mention that requests made to him by the Union for official information which calls into question his “affordability” claim are yet to be provided.
He said, too, “His line of reasoning would appear to be that whatever crumbs are thrown in the (public servants) direction, they will simply soldier on, regardless.”
Yarde believes that the Minister’s posture amounts to taking public servants and their families for granted and putting the future of the nation at risk.
Further, Yarde said, “It is a harsh irony that Minister Jordan appears indifferent to the importance of better pay for all categories of Public Servants in circumstances where quite a few contracted employees at the Ministry for which he has Cabinet responsibility enjoy ‘super’ salaries.”

GPSU President,
Patrick Yarde

Yarde made it clear that the Union has no objection to a situation in which salary levels are commensurate with qualifications and experience and where scarce skills need to be recruited to fill key and critical public sector positions.
According to the Union’s President, the reckless and ill-conceived comments about public servants pay though a stage has surely been reached where what he has to say will not only compromise the on-going negotiations and further frustrate the country’s public servants, but may also, in the final analysis, have a deleterious effect on the long term effectiveness of the public service.
Yarde said that the Finance Minister should be counselled to desist from making pronouncements that do no more than pollute the prevailing environment.
In an article by this newspaper yesterday, it was reported that the Finance Minister insists that Government has to make increases that can be sustained. He believes that the current 10 per cent offer on the table is the embodiment of that principle.
Jordan said that citizens must understand that every increase that Government makes is one that has to be seen as not only being paid for today but for the next year and beyond that.
The Finance Minister stressed that sustainable payments which have implications for pensions and so forth have to come from growth in revenues.
Jordan said, “We recognize that public servants need the kind of payment that is being bandied about, but that can only happen if the cake grows larger and larger.”

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News