A for­mer deputy Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor is voic­ing the un­pop­u­lar opin­ion that the salaries of the Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter, Op­po­si­tion Leader, and oth­ers should be in­creased.

Econ­o­mist Dr Ter­rence Far­rell says while there’s much crit­i­cism of the pro­posed fig­ures in the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s (SRC) re­port laid in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, the wage hike is long over­due.

“Your top ech­e­lon of your peo­ple, the peo­ple who are the best qual­i­fied, most com­pe­tent peo­ple. Your per­ma­nent sec­re­taries are run­ning a min­istry with thou­sands of peo­ple in­side of it re­spon­si­ble for bud­gets of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars and you want to pay them $35,000 a month? It’s ridicu­lous. Quite frankly, it is ridicu­lous!” he stressed.

De­spite Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in Sep­tem­ber telling the na­tion to hold the fort as this year un­til the sec­ond quar­ter of 2027 will be a pe­ri­od of dif­fi­cul­ty, Far­rell does not think the coun­try is un­able to pay its high-rank­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials more mon­ey.

“Of course, it can be af­ford­ed,” the econ­o­mist said in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day.

“The rea­son why it can be af­ford­ed is be­cause the num­ber of peo­ple who are in that po­si­tion who are un­der the purview of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion is a small num­ber of peo­ple—about 100 and some­thing peo­ple. It’s not a lot of peo­ple. But the pub­lic ser­vice is 80,000,” he said, ref­er­enc­ing the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to of­fer 4 per cent to pub­lic sec­tor work­ers dur­ing the col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

Ac­knowl­edg­ing that his com­ments may earn him the pop­u­la­tion’s ire, Far­rell clar­i­fied that he does not dis­agree with peo­ple’s ob­jec­tions to the in­crease in prin­ci­ple, as he un­der­stands that the op­tics don’t seem fair.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, for them (gov­ern­ment) to ac­cept the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s rec­om­men­da­tions and im­ple­ment it would at this junc­ture be a slap in the face for the en­tire pub­lic ser­vice, that is ab­solute­ly true. But I would say that step­ping back from that, we have to change the phi­los­o­phy of the whole ques­tion of the man­age­ment of the pub­lic ser­vice, of min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty, and in that con­text, there is ab­solute­ly no rea­son why all the peo­ple un­der the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion should not have sub­stan­tial in­creas­es in their com­pen­sa­tion to be com­pa­ra­ble to what is ob­tained in the pri­vate sec­tor,” he said.

Far­rell added that it can be vex­ing to be of­fered four per cent while the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s salary can go up by 76 per cent. How­ev­er, he main­tained that the hike is nec­es­sary and sug­gest­ed that a per­for­mance man­age­ment scheme be cre­at­ed to en­sure val­ue for mon­ey.

“If I’m pay­ing you a cer­tain lev­el of com­pen­sa­tion, then I al­so want to have per­for­mance. So, this no­tion of a ca­reer pub­lic ser­vant where you have em­ploy­ment for life and un­til you re­tire and get a pen­sion and so on, al­so has to go out of the win­dow. I am quite pre­pared to dou­ble the salary of a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary, but if you don’t per­form then you go home. You’re fired!”

The for­mer deputy cen­tral bank gov­er­nor said this lat­est in­ci­dent speaks to the im­por­tance of pub­lic ser­vice re­form. He said these of­fi­cials ought to be paid fair­ly, based on the tremen­dous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty they bear “and then we turn around and we want to pay them peanuts be­cause of how it will look,” he quipped.

‘What good for govt, good for pub­lic ser­vants too’

Mean­while, Michael An­nisette, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) and gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) said union mem­bers will deal with the SRC pro­pos­al in the com­ing days.

“We will come up with a strate­gic and ef­fec­tive way to make our voic­es heard. Rest as­sured, be­cause we are in a bat­tle with the Gov­ern­ment.”

He said the SWW­TU has ar­gued for a 12 per cent pay in­crease for port work­ers and nine per cent for NIB work­ers.

The Gov­ern­ment has of­fered four per cent over six years.

“The same prin­ci­ple must ap­ply to the Gov­ern­ment. What is good for the Gov­ern­ment should be good for pub­lic ser­vants, so we should get the same in­creas­es.”

An­nisette said the Gov­ern­ment should on­ly get an in­crease based on their per­for­mance “so there would be an ac­count­abil­i­ty mech­a­nism.”

He said there was a wide salary gap for pub­lic ser­vants in T&T.

Calls to Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union chief ed­u­ca­tion and re­search of­fi­cer Ozzi War­wick went unan­swered.

Salaries around the re­gion

In May last year, Ja­maicans took to the streets in protest over pro­posed pay hikes for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.

Un­der the pub­lic-sec­tor-com­pen­sa­tion re­view con­duct­ed the year pri­or, Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness’ salary was ex­pect­ed to be in­creased from Ja­maican $9.16 mil­lion to $28.5 mil­lion per year. This amounts to TT$391,465.87 or US$57,504.93 an­nu­al­ly.

How­ev­er, amid pub­lic pres­sure, Hol­ness de­clined to take the salary in­crease.

Mean­while, Ja­maica’s Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al, who is on par with T&T’s Pres­i­dent, was set to re­ceive just over $34 mil­lion per year. This is equiv­a­lent to TT$1,453,039.24 or US$213,446.23. The gov­er­nor-gen­er­al was pre­vi­ous­ly paid just over $12 mil­lion, an al­most 200 per cent in­crease in salary, that will move his pub­licly fund­ed in­come to just over $34 mil­lion per year.

Ja­maica’s Chief Jus­tice was set to re­ceive the same amount as the gov­er­nor gen­er­al while the Op­po­si­tion Leader would have been paid $25,729,103. This is TT$1,098,326.72 or US$161,340.24.

Their salary hikes were ap­proved and ac­cept­ed.

In St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, ac­cord­ing to their es­ti­mates of rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture for 2024, the Prime Min­is­ter was in line to re­ceive EC$164,542 per year. This is equiv­a­lent to $TT414,468.84 or US$60,883.98 for the same pe­ri­od.

The gov­er­nor gen­er­al was ex­pect­ed to re­ceive EC$130,347 a year or $TT328,334 or US$48,231.12.

SVG merged its chief jus­tice with the Supreme Court of the East­ern Caribbean but its Chief Mag­is­trate is meant to earn EC$127,644 a year or $10,637 TT$321,525.57 which is equiv­a­lent to US$47,230.95.

The is­land’s Op­po­si­tion Leader al­so earns $EC107,812 per year. This is TT$271,570.26 a year or US$39,892.69.

Based on the SRC re­port, PM Row­ley is ex­pect­ed to get $87,847 a month and more than a mil­lion in back­pay; the Op­po­si­tion Leader should re­ceive $52,159 a month and more than $900,000 in back­pay; the Pres­i­dent should re­ceive $81,170 a month and the Chief Jus­tice $60,919.

Ef­forts yes­ter­day to con­tact Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley for his thoughts on the pro­posed salary in­crease proved fu­tile.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has al­so not re­spond­ed to calls or mes­sages about the pro­pos­al.

—with re­port­ing by Shal­iza Has­sanali