Pay hike approved

…public servants to get increases ranging from 0.5% to 7%
…Min Jordan confirms to be paid retroactive from Jan. 1

THE A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) government has approved increases for all public servants ranging from 0.5% to 7% for 2018, Finance Minister Winston Jordan has confirmed.

In a circular issued on Monday, November 19, the Financial Secretary of the Ministry of Finance informed all heads of budget agencies that the increases have been approved for all public servants. The increases will take effect from January 1, 2018, and as such would be paid retroactively.

According to the circular, public servants that earned up to $100,000 as of December 31, 2018, will receive a seven per cent increase while public servants that acquired salaries between $100,000 and $299,999 will receive a 6.5 per cent increase.

Public servants whose salaries ranged between $300,000 and $499.999 will receive a five per cent increase; those that fall within the $500,000 to $699,999 bracket will receive three per cent increase; $700,000 to $799,999 – two per cent increase; $800,000 to $999,999 – one per cent; and those earning one million dollars and above would receive a 0.5 per cent increase.

The ministry noted that the increases are payable to workers who were employed as at the November 2018 payroll. According to the circular, the increase is applicable to “all traditional public servants, defined to mean those employed in ministries, departments not under ministerial control, regional administrators, and Public Service-related agencies, i.e., commissions, secretariats and those who are engaged on contract positions reflected on the inventory of authorised positions of the traditional Public Service and persons on contract outside on the inventorised positions.”

It is also applicable to all members of the disciplined services.
The circular mentioned that the increases are not applicable to teachers, employees of the University of Guyana and ministers and Members of Parliament. A separate circular has been issued to address increases for teachers in keeping with the Memorandum of Agreement between the Ministry of Education and the Guyana Teachers’ Union signed on October 24, 2018.

Only on Sunday, Minister Jordan in a letter to the editor, said public servants can expect salary increases especially in the next three years. He also announced that Old Age Pensions which now stands at $19,500 per month, will be further increased when the national budget is presented on Monday.

Jordan made the announcements while responding to an article by trade union leader Lincoln Lewis. Under the caption “Local Government Elections, though disappointing to some, were not unexpected”, Lewis’s article touched on a number of issues including the increase in salaries for Cabinet ministers, as well as Members of Parliament and the payment of year-end bonuses to members of the disciplined services.

In addressing the issue of the bonus to members of the disciplined forces, Jordan explained that for many years the previous People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration had adopted the practice of paying less to public sector workers, so as to retain an amount to pay year-end bonuses to workers in the disciplined services only.

“Recall that the standard wage increase was five per cent per annum, resulting in the paltry minimum wage of $39,570, in 2015. But a higher percentage has been budgeted to pay increases to all workers across-the-board. The difference in the two percentages was used to finance the one-month bonus to the disciplined services. Even in cases where funds remained after paying the bonuses, the previous administration refused to use them to pay the other public sector workers, preferring to return them to the treasury,” Jordan, who worked as the finance ministry’s budget director for several years when the People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) was in power, said.

He said it is a policy of the coalition government that all workers must benefit if there are excess resources that can be shared. Hence, in 2015 and 2016, all workers benefited from the payment of bonuses of $50,000 and $25,000, respectively.

Jordan acknowledged that since 2017, the government has had to grapple with financial challenges that have precluded paying bonuses. “However, we have paid salary increases beyond the “five per cent”, such that the minimum wage has rapidly increased by nearly 52 percent in two years, from $39,570, in 2015, to $60,000, in 2017. It took the PPP/C administration nine years to move the minimum wage by a similar percentage, or from $26,070, in 2006 to $39,570, in 2015. All workers can expect salary increases going forward, especially in 2018, 2019 and 2020.”

The finance minister said he found particularly nauseating, Mr. Lewis’s attempt to connect the lower voter turnout by the disciplined services to the ending of the one-month bonus. “I firmly believe that our hard-fought right to vote cannot be so easily and callously sacrificed for the proverbial “40 pieces of silver.”

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