KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

One in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor is ques­tion­ing how the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) came up with its lat­est rec­om­men­da­tions, which in­clude over $150 mil­lion in back pay for pub­lic of­fi­cials.

Sen­a­tor Paul Richards told Guardian Me­dia he be­lieves the SRC needs to pro­vide the bench­marks by which its rec­om­men­da­tions were made es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the ini­tial re­port was re­ject­ed due to anom­alies in the salaries for gov­ern­ment min­is­ters.

Richards said, “It’s in­ter­est­ing the lev­els of di­verse com­men­tary that this SRC re­port has gen­er­at­ed. The SRC needs to pro­vide the ref­er­ence and bench­marks up­on which the rec­om­men­da­tions have been made, es­pe­cial­ly in the con­text of the pre­vi­ous re­port hav­ing been re­ject­ed due to anom­alies iden­ti­fied by the MOF.

“Are the rec­om­men­da­tions bench­marked against re­gion­al or in­ter­na­tion­al po­si­tions with com­pa­ra­ble re­spon­si­bil­i­ties? It’s al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the dis­cus­sion on the time­ly ne­go­ti­a­tions for all pub­lic ser­vants and the crit­i­cal el­e­ments of any dis­cus­sion on salary in­creas­es which in­clude per­for­mance as­sess­ment and man­age­ment and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.”

Ac­cord­ing to the SRC re­port, the pro­posed salary of a sen­a­tor is $17,020. While sen­a­tors, along with high-rank­ing mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry will ben­e­fit if the SRC re­port is im­ple­ment­ed, one high court judge is al­so re­ject­ing the pro­posed pay hike at this time.

The judge, who has asked to re­main anony­mous, said it would be “ir­re­spon­si­ble and in­equitable” for the re­port to be im­ple­ment­ed while ad­mit­ting that judges’ com­pen­sa­tion amounts to more than most cit­i­zens in this coun­try. Some lo­cal judges’ salaries even ex­ceed that of their Cari­com col­leagues, such as judges in Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica, ac­cord­ing to this judge.

And while the SRC re­port comes amid height­ened protests by pub­lic ser­vants to get high­er wages, the judge sug­gest­ed that every­one re­ceive the same pay hike.

The judge said, “High Court judges cur­rent­ly re­ceive $76,000 tax-free with a month­ly salary in­clu­sive of al­lowances. In ad­di­tion, we have dri­vers, re­ceive an an­nu­al tax-free trav­el grant of $69,000, can pur­chase tax-free ve­hi­cles every two years, and all med­ical ex­pens­es are borne by the State. This com­pen­sa­tion pack­age ex­ceeds what judges are paid in Bar­ba­dos, the EC, Guyana, and Ja­maica, and the re­al­i­ty is that it amounts to more com­pen­sa­tion than the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens re­ceive.

“While there is a need to re­view the ap­plic­a­ble re­mu­ner­a­tion to re­flect the unique role that judges play, the Ju­di­cia­ry is not per­form­ing at the re­quired lev­els of ef­fi­cien­cy at this time, and the ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens are strug­gling to sur­vive even with the of­fers of three per cent in­creas­es. In these cir­cum­stances, it would be ir­re­spon­si­ble and in­equitable for the pro­posed in­creas­es to be im­ple­ment­ed. If work­ing-class cit­i­zens are be­ing of­fered three per cent then three per cent should al­so ap­ply to all those who fall un­der the purview of the SRC.”

Mean­while, if the SRC re­port is im­ple­ment­ed, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) ex­ec­u­tives will al­so be re­ceiv­ing hefty back pay. Ac­cord­ing to the re­port, the To­ba­go Chief Sec­re­tary stands to get $388,726 in back pay.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine but re­ceived no re­sponse up to late yes­ter­day.

How­ev­er, THA Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith B Yis­rael said she was not fo­cused on the salary. The SRC re­port in­di­cat­ed that the THA Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary’s cur­rent salary is $25,240. The pro­posed salary is $40,629.

Dr Yis­rael said, “The salary is not why we of­fered our­selves for of­fice. We do our best and will con­tin­ue to do our best re­gard­less of the de­ci­sion of the Cab­i­net/Par­lia­ment.”

Guardian Me­dia al­so reached out to dozens of oth­er of­fice­hold­ers with pro­posed salary in­creas­es from the SRC re­port, in­clud­ing MPs, may­ors, and oth­er state of­fi­cials. How­ev­er, they re­mained tight-lipped, and some said they would await the gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion on the re­port.