–Dr. Singh affirms, says there will continue to be consistent increases in income, other major economic initiatives

SENIOR Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh has affirmed that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government will continue to increase the incomes of public sector employees, and also focus on enhancing the well-being of those workers through other key economic initiatives.

“We are going to continue to not only be consistently raising incomes for public sector employees, but also addressing all of the other things that matter to people too. Like, for example, the taxes. We implemented a number of measures to reduce taxes, but then, one has to take a holistic view of well-being; economic well-being at an individual household level.

And there are a lot of things that we sometimes examine when we have these discussions about well-being and household well-being… There are a lot of dimensions that sometimes you don’t factor into the discussion,” Dr. Singh said during an interview on the Guyana Today show televised on the National Communications Network (NCN).

The senior minister made reference to a number of initiatives that preceded the recent announcement of an eight per cent, across-the-board retroactive salary increase, which further boosts the individual and household income of all public servants.

“And so, this latest announcement by President Ali yesterday [Thursday] represents an extremely important announcement, but yet another installment, if I may describe it as such, in the government’s continued efforts to improve disposable incomes and improve people’s quality of life,” Dr. Singh said.

He added: “Bear in mind that this eight per cent comes on top of a seven per cent that was given in 2021. So, if you took the seven plus the eight in 2022, you have, over those two years, a 15 per cent increase. But you also have, of course, a number of other measures, which I’d be happy to speak about, which were aimed at improving disposable incomes in families across Guyana.”
To add to the existing provisions, President Ali had instructed, too, that options be identified for adjustments to the salaries paid to several specific categories of public sector employees in phases.

“These include, in the first phase, ranks of the police force, the prison service, and fire service. Additionally, a similar exercise is currently being conducted, and recommendations being made in relation to specific categories of employees in our public healthcare system, including nurses, interns, doctors, and other healthcare professionals,” Dr. Ali said on Thursday.

Minister Singh said there are a lot of opportunities that are in the pipeline and already available to public servants for personal upliftment and overall improvement of their quality of life.

“That’s something we said; this is a commitment that we’re giving to all of the people of Guyana. And President Ali and his government, we’ve set about doing this from the very first day; trying to create opportunities, trying to improve people’s lives, trying to improve people’s disposable incomes, and we’ve done that through multiple channels, and deploying multiple policies and measures over the two years that we’ve been in office,” Dr. Singh said.

Over the past two years, the government has restored the one-month, tax-free, year-end bonuses to the Disciplined Services totalling more than $1 billion per annum, and there has been an increase of about 40 per cent in the monthly old-age pension, from $20,500 to $28,000, providing a total pension payout of more than $21 billion to senior citizens.

Additionally, there was an increase of 55 per cent in public assistance payments from $9,000 to $14,000 monthly, providing a total of more than $3 billion in annual income support to beneficiaries of the programme, restoration of the cash grants to the parents of school-aged children, increasing the amount provided for each child to $30,000, and extending the programme to children attending private schools.

In total, this provides $6 billion of direct cash transfers to the parents of 200,000 schoolchildren, and an increase in the minimum wage for private sector employees by 36 per cent to $60,147, in keeping with the recommendations of the tripartite committee.
There has also been an aggressive housing campaign, among many other initiatives geared at improving the lives of every Guyanese.