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Oct 10, 2015 Letters
Dear Editor,
It is interesting how bellicose the persons have been about salary increases for current Ministers and MPs; but have at – the same time been eloquently silent about the meagre salaries paid to teachers, as publicised in the press recently. These include some of the very people who are forced to raise funds to pay for extra lessons. Not a peep from the media either, since the story may not have been sufficiently sensational.
But for the information of these very publics some review of comparabilities in job values of Parliamentarians as a whole may help. The table below shows salaries of Parliamentarians published earlier in 2015 by Kaieteur News.
A practised eye could detect the lack of rationality in the values attached to the various levels of decision-making. For example, the Parliamentary Secretary is ranked much higher in the hierarchy than the Deputy Speaker, Chief Whip and other MPs.
Compounding the apparent irrationality are the following comparabilities (reflecting Public Service salaries as at January 01, 2014). Highlighted are the maximum of each of the scales applicable to the identified positions.
Up to that time it did not appear to have been noticed that a Permanent Secretary who reported to a Minister could access a maximum salary higher than that of the latter’s fixed salary. Imagine the differential in the case where the PS is a contracted employee!
Not mentioned in the Table is GS12 the maximum of which is $380,536. This grade includes the position of the Administrator of the Palms. Compare this with the salary of Deputy Speaker, Chief Whip and Other MP.
But perhaps more interesting would be some of the salaries attributed to staff in the former Office of the President, the majority of whom were not public servants, but could have been expected to benefit from the usual across-the-board increases.
– Policy Advisor Land & the Environment – $1,035,000
– Presidential Advisor – $967,988
– *Head of the Presidential Secretariat – $895,326
– CDC Director General – $686,122
– Attorney At Law – $478,476
– Technical Legal Advisor – $430,196
– Press Secretary – $395,000
– Prime Executive of Coordinating Committee – $393,117
– Communication Coordinator – $339,950
* A Public Service Post – GS14
The above salaries were prior to the adjustments reflected in scales effective January 01, 2014. They represent a tiny proportion of a staff over 350 in the Office of the President at May 2015, competence not necessarily being a demanded performance factor.
It once again directs attention to the exponential increase in the proportion of contracted employees, alleged to be public servants, over recent years.
For example across the Regional Administrations alone there are 1471, the competency criteria for selection being quite unknown. Then there are the 4018 employed across Ministries whose salaries do not necessarily fit into any scale.
In the meantime it seems to have been overlooked that they all are likely to benefit from recommendations for salary adjustments expected from the current COI into the Public Service.
All the above research has tried to do for legitimate skeptics is place the issue, hopefully, in a more balanced context, remarking in the process that the Opposition would appear to also benefit from the proposed increases.
E.B. John
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