Latest update February 6th, 2025 7:27 AM
MotP assistant researcher paid super salary of $300k
– contract renewed one month before elections
Research assistant attached to the MotP, Ronald Austin Jr.
According to new details, a research assistant attached to the Ministry of the Presidency (MotP) had secured a salary of over $300,000 a month, complemented by many benefits.
In fact, a document details that the employee, Ronald Austin Jr., had not only secured a salary of $324,586 a month, but he also benefitted from a travel allowance of $10,000 that was free of tax; owned a government-paid landline and was provided with cellular service on which the internet was paid for by the government too. The benefits did not stop there. It included a gratuity of 22½ percent of his basic salary calculated at half yearly intervals. Austin Jr. was also the beneficiary of an annual vacation allowance of one month’s basic salary earned at the anniversary date of his employment.
Notably, his contract was renewed one month before the March 2, General and Regional Elections.
Austin Jr’s., contract was released shortly after he posted to Facebook that he worked his “socks off for years” and had received no special treatments. He said, in fact that he worked all across the 10 administrative regions with what he considered to be a “basic contract and salary” and insisted that he “never got the big perks.”
His post went on to state that, “It seems as if professionals are being sent a subtle message that you must join the party to get these fat salaries. We need meritocracy. Persons must be rewarded based on volume of work and a clear merit system.”
Some transparency advocates, however, have raised concerns on how it is that a research assistant like Austin Jr., could secure the benefits that he has.
This research assistant is only one out of a list of possibly hundreds, who were paid big bucks by the previous coalition administration for holding obscure positions, and no proof can be unearthed to show that these employees did any actual work.
Kaieteur News, only two days ago, reported that the Ministry of Communities, under the previous ministry, had paid over $800M to some 56 contract workers for their work since 2015.
Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Nigel Dharamlall, made that disclosure during his first press engagement at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre after a review of the records was conducted.
“We found that in the Minister’s Secretariat of the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, 23 staffers were earning as much as, in total per month, $7.73M,” he told the press.
Among those staffers, he said, were political appointees of the previous A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) administration. Since the new People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) government took office a week ago, none of the 56 staffers showed up to work.
Between the Community Development Council (CDC), and former Minister Ronald Bulkan’s Secretariat, the Minister said, the payroll was approximately $13.5 million per month.
Similar Articles
THE BLUNT OF THE DAY
Sports
Features/Columnists
Land, taxes and penalties
Peeping Tom… Kaieteur News-The American humorist Will Rogers once remarked that the best investment on earth is earth... more
OAS Secretary General Election and renewed OAS Consensus
Antiguan Barbudan Ambassador to the United States, Sir Ronald Sanders By Sir Ronald Sanders Kaieteur News- The upcoming election... more
Weekend Cartoon
