CARL Greenidge, Shadow Finance Minister and a Member of Parliament for A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) on Tuesday opened the debate on the $192.8B, 2012 National Budget with a misguided call for Government to increase public sector wages by 20%. In doing so, Greenidge ignored the fact that since 2006, with annual increases that are usually announced and paid retroactively at the end of the year, the wages of a public sector employee have increased by at least 50%.
A hypothetical employee earning $30,000 at the end of 2005 would have received a cumulative increase of 71% in salary by the end of 2011 as shown in the table below:

January 1, 2005 Hypothetical Salary – $30,000

On the other hand, a hypothetical employee earning $50,000 at the end of 2005 would have received a cumulative increase of 54.6 % by the end of 2011 as shown below:

January 1, 2005 Hypothetical Salary – $50,000

These increases are even more impressive when compared against the global economic and financial crisis that has seen millions of civil servants all over the world, especially in developed countries such as the United States; face either pay freezes, pay cuts, unpaid work furloughs or redundancies.
In addition to such healthy increases in public sector salaries, government has also increased the income tax threshold from $25,000 to a proposed $50,000 in the current budget before the National Assembly, ensuring that employees get to keep more of the money that they earn.