The ma­jor­i­ty of Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and Op­po­si­tion MPs re­mained tight-lipped yes­ter­day on the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s (SRC) rec­om­men­da­tions for a pro­posed pay hike for top State of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Of the 14 gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and 12 op­po­si­tion MPs who were asked in What­sApp mes­sages or face-to-face by Guardian Me­dia if they thought it was the right time for pub­lic of­fi­cers hold­ers to get a pay hike, es­pe­cial­ly when unions are protest­ing for more mon­ey for work­ers, on­ly one min­is­ter and three op­po­si­tion MPs re­spond­ed.

The re­main­ing 21 par­lia­men­tar­i­ans kept mum.

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon as the first to re­spond. She said, “the mat­ter is to be de­bat­ed in time to come.”

Dur­ing an Ar­rive Alive Re­mem­brance Day func­tion at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah yes­ter­day, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan was al­so asked about the SRC’s rec­om­men­da­tion.

“I wouldn’t com­ment on that...that has been placed in the Par­lia­ment and it’s up for de­bate. I have noth­ing to say on that.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of  Works and Trans­port Richie Sookhai, who was al­so in at­ten­dance, avoid­ed ques­tions.

The min­is­ters who re­mained silent on the is­sue were Symon de No­bri­ga, Kaz­im Ho­sein, Mar­vin Gon­za­les, Stephen Mc Clashie, Faris Al-Rawi, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, Fos­ter Cum­mings, Adri­an Leonce, Kei­th Scot­land, Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian and Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

How­ev­er, Oropouche West MP Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo summed up the lay­ing of the SRC’s re­port in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day as “a des­per­ate at­tempt to dis­tract from the for­eign ex­change cri­sis, the mas­sive for­eign and do­mes­tic debt, grow­ing pover­ty and the crime tsuna­mi,” by the Gov­ern­ment.

The SRC pro­posed that Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ba­sic salary jump from $59,680 to $80,000-a $20,320 in­crease be­tween Oc­to­ber 1, 2020 to Sep­tem­ber 30,2023. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ef­fec­tive Oc­to­ber 1, 2023, Row­ley’s salary will re­ceive a fur­ther bump mov­ing to $87,847 (an in­crease of $28,167).

The Pres­i­dent’s salary would in­crease from the cur­rent $64,270 to $73,920 in an ini­tial three-year pe­ri­od from April 1, 2020 to March 31, 2023, and then in­crease fur­ther to $81,170 there­after.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader would get an in­crease from $29,590 to $47,500 from Oc­to­ber 1, 2020 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2023, and then to $52,159 from Oc­to­ber 1, 2023.

Tan­coo, the UNC’s chair­man said when the SRC re­port was “first sub­mit­ted it was re­port­ed that (Colm) Im­bert said he sent it back be­cause it was not good enough. What changed? I look for­ward to hear­ing Row­ley and Im­bert’s views on this.”

Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles felt this was not the right time “to agree to sig­nif­i­cant pay in­creas­es for the PM, Op­po­si­tion Leader, MPs and oth­er State of­fi­cials while or­di­nary pub­lic ser­vants, giv­en T&T’s eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances, are asked to ac­cept four per cent.”

He said T&T sim­ply can­not af­ford the rec­om­mend­ed in­creas­es.

The MP said the coun­try was in the dark about the cri­te­ria the SRC used.

“It  can­not be jus­ti­fied on the ba­sis of com­pa­ra­ble wages in the pri­vate sec­tor.”

T&T, he said, needs to adopt the mod­el used in Sin­ga­pore where­by min­is­ters and oth­ers are paid a com­pet­i­tive base salary with bonus­es tied to the achieve­ment of mea­sur­able per­for­mance-based tar­gets.

“A Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in Sin­ga­pore­an mod­el would, for ex­am­ple, re­ceive a base salary of say $50,000 per month. If us­ing the mod­el he re­duces the an­nu­al mur­der rate by ten per cent, he/she gets a bonus of say 15 per cent of base salary.”

If the an­nu­al mur­der rates re­main the same or in­crease, he gets no bonus, Charles said.

“Un­less T&T moves to a first world, per­for­mance based, out­put ori­ent­ed mea­sur­able cri­te­ria for salary in­creas­es for se­nior pub­lic ser­vants, we will con­tin­ue use­less and un­pro­duc­tive ar­gu­ments about whether or not rec­om­men­da­tions of the SRC are jus­ti­fied or not.”

In­sist­ing that T&T was fac­ing dire cir­cum­stances, Tabaquite MP Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne said it was a bad time for high-rank­ing of­fi­cials to get a pay in­crease.

“What we must fo­cus on is find­ing a way to get T&T in the right eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion be­cause the cost of liv­ing is too high and per­sons are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to make a fair wage.”

She said while the Gov­ern­ment has been call­ing on the pop­u­la­tion to tight­en their belts, peo­ple in high of­fice are un­will­ing to make sac­ri­fices.

“But the onus is on the par­lia­men­tar­i­ans ... whether or not they will take that rec­om­men­da­tion. Cer­tain­ly, now is not the time.”

Ef­forts were made to con­tact oth­er Op­po­si­tion mem­bers such as Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, Michelle Ben­jamin, Bar­ry Padarath, David Lee, Sad­dam Ho­sein, Rudy In­dars­ingh, Van­dana Mo­hit, Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe and Khadi­jah Ameen, who all failed to re­spond.

MSJ: It should not be con­sid­ered

Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice leader David Ab­du­lah said there should nev­er be any con­sid­er­a­tion for the re­port to be de­bat­ed in the House.

“It should have been slapped down one time by the Gov­ern­ment. They should have said, in their moral con­science, they can’t ac­cept the in­crease, when oth­er sec­tions of the so­ci­ety did not re­ceive an in­crease in the last ten years.”

He called on the trade union move­ment and work­ing class to come to­geth­er and demon­strate mass ac­tion.

The SRC re­port ac­cord­ing to Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Camille Robin­son-Reg­is will be de­bat­ed in the House at the ear­li­est op­por­tu­ni­ty.