–           Jordan says salary increase hinges on available revenues

By Ariana Gordon

The government is not in a financial position to fulfill its campaign promise to increase Police salaries, Finance Minister Winston Jordan said Monday, but assured that the matter remains a top priority.

“It is not that a campaign promise wasn’t kept! Yes, on the surface it wasn’t kept but it was not because of bad-mind or whatever sake we didn’t keep it.

“The fact is we just didn’t have the resources to do,” he told reporters at his Main and Urquhart Streets office, Georgetown.

He said that when the APNU-AFC coalition took office May last year, it had to find $12B to bail out the ailing Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) and another $3B to pay rice farmers after Venezuela failed to pay for rice and paddy supplied.

He said too the government was also forced to find additional sums to intensify the country’s international campaign against Venezuela during that country’s attempt to claim the Essequibo Region.

The Finance Minister was not in a position to state when the members of the GPF would receive the promised increases but sought to assure that the campaign promises will be fulfilled. That particular promise to the Police Force, he said, can only become a reality when government is able to collect more taxes.

“We are going to be making good on our promises to pay people more when we are able to gather our revenues in the sufficiency that is required to not only pay more but make sure it is sustainable,” he said.

Jordan noted that it is not feasible to increase salaries that cannot be sustained.

“There is no sense I pay you more today, inflation goes up or I pay you more today and come tomorrow I have to increase your tax rate because I can’t sustain the payment that I have made.”

He assured that the issue of increases in salary for members of the Police Force is “on our front burner”.

“We are not running a Bolt-like sprint; we are running a slow marathon. We will get there,” Jordan said.

In its manifesto, the Coalition said that once in government the law enforcement officers would receive a 20 per cent salary increase during its first year in office.

Jordan said fulfilling the promise during the first year was a difficult task given the realities of what was found when the coalition took office last year. He said though the Police Force received no increase as per the coalition’s promise, government was able to “scrape together” a $50,000 one off year-end bonus that was well received by the masses.

“Not that we would have paid $12B in increases but what I am saying is that the resources would have been there,” the Finance Minister added.