–PM slams hefty salary increases PPP top-brass paid themselves

PRIME Minister Mr Moses Nagamootoo said Monday evening that he finds it unconscionable that salary increases for PPP/C presidents and ministers amounted to over 386% and 220% respectively over a 17-year period while that party was in office.The Prime Minister’s comments followed Minister of Finance Winston Jordan’s release of statistics pertaining to a question posed by Government Member of Parliament, Mr Jermaine Figueira, during the day’s sitting of the National Assembly.
The question at reference had to do with the annual increases in salaries for public servants as opposed to that paid ministers and presidents for the period 1998 to 2014.
As asked, Minister Jordan revealed that total salary increases for public servants for the period amounted to 164.7%, mainly in single-digit increments, while that of the then PPP ministers of government had increased “by a whopping 220.5%, some 55% more than that of the public servants.
Minister Jordan further revealed that the president’s salary, during the same period, increased by a mammoth 386.5%, which amounted to over 220% the increase paid public servants for the same period.
Current Opposition Leader, Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo, served as President from 1999 until 2011, while Mr. Donald Ramotar served in the same capacity from 2011 to 2015, which means that both parties would have benefitted from the salary increases at issue.
The revelations prompted the prime minister to observe: “It is utterly disgraceful that the post-Jagan Cabinet bureaucracy grabbed an average 300% salary hike during 1998 and 2014.
“They ‘helped’ the poor public servants over this period by giving a total of 164%, mostly in 5% doses, but in 17 years, the PPP ministers were paid a more than handsome 220% salary increases.
“The Presidents helped themselves to the full trough, by taking a 386% increase in salary. Now we know how fat these cats had become while in political office.”
In 2006 alone, then President Jagdeo was given an enormous 273% salary increase, while in the same year, ministers benefitted from an 89.5% increase. The largest single increase public servants received was in 1999, when a 31% increased was granted.
In 2000, a 26% increase was provided, but for the next 14 years, only on two occasions was there a double-digit increase.
In eight of those years, the public servants salary increase was 5%, including in 2006, when the President and his ministers received an immense “top up.”
Monday’s sitting of the National Assembly was the 60th sitting of the 11th Parliament and was designated Private Members Day.