KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) is fac­ing mount­ing pres­sure from par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to ex­plain the ba­sis of its re­cent rec­om­men­da­tions, which in­clude more than $150 mil­lion in back pay for high of­fice hold­ers.

This comes a day af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ac­cept­ed the SRC’s re­port—a de­ci­sion now be­ing heav­i­ly crit­i­cised, par­tic­u­lar­ly by the Op­po­si­tion.

While sen­a­tors stand to ben­e­fit from the lat­est SRC salary in­crease pro­pos­al, some in­de­pen­dent and op­po­si­tion sen­a­tors said they do not even know the bench­mark by which they were mea­sured to re­ceive a pay hike.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia out­side the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Paul Richards said, “I think they should be trans­par­ent in the in­ter­est of ex­plain­ing to the pub­lic what their met­rics were ... The pub­lic has a right to know, be­cause it is tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey, and it may very well be jus­ti­fied or quell some of the re­mon­stra­tions about it.”

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jayan­ti Lutch­me­di­al-Ram­di­al said, “My thought on the whole SRC thing is that be­fore im­ple­ment­ing any in­crease, there should have been clar­i­fi­ca­tion and a greater lev­el of di­a­logue to ex­plain the process that went on in ar­riv­ing at these fig­ures and these pro­posed in­creas­es. I don’t think the pop­u­la­tion un­der­stands. I my­self don’t even un­der­stand what is the method­ol­o­gy be­ing used. I think it’s a slap in the face of the work­ing class of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I come from a pub­lic ser­vice fam­i­ly, and when you see peo­ple be­ing of­fered four per cent and the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for it be­ing ba­si­cal­ly be­cause the coun­try can­not af­ford to do bet­ter, and you see the man­ner in which they (the Gov­ern­ment) have gone about this in­crease, I think it’s very dis­re­spect­ful to the pop­u­la­tion.”

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Dami­an Ly­der said, “I find it’s an ab­solute shame that when we have a sit­u­a­tion in this coun­try where cit­i­zens, es­pe­cial­ly pub­lic ser­vants, are be­ing of­fered four per cent. I think it’s an ab­solute dis­grace, and shame should have ac­cept­ed that re­port, start­ing with the Prime Min­is­ter, and should have tak­en that very large salary in­crease. You’re get­ting the salary in­crease for what?” Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John said, “I ex­pect­ed him to ac­cept it be­cause the Prime Min­is­ter is tone deaf. He doesn’t read the room. He don’t care about any­body but him­self. The Prime Min­is­ter has shown us who he is ... The re­port of the SRC didn’t get to the Par­lia­ment on its own. It didn’t walk and get here. I know if that was Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, if that re­port had even got­ten to the of­fice, it would have stayed there gath­er­ing dust.”

Mean­while, for­mer sen­a­tor Robert Le Hunte, how­ev­er, is in sup­port of Dr Row­ley’s de­ci­sion to ac­cept the SRC’s lat­est pro­pos­al. He re­ferred to it as a “gusty de­ci­sion.”

Le Hunte said, “I agreed with the re­cent de­ci­sion of the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment to re­view and im­ple­ment salary in­creas­es for its se­nior pub­lic ser­vice of­fi­cials. I con­sid­er the ra­tio­nale be­hind that de­ci­sion to be equal­ly ap­plic­a­ble lo­cal­ly, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of re­cent pub­lic dis­cus­sion on the lat­est rec­om­men­da­tions of our Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion. In at­tempt­ing to ad­dress the myr­i­ad of is­sues fac­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, it all be­gins with the qual­i­ty of those tasked with lead­er­ship.

“This qual­i­ty, of course, is di­rect­ly im­pact­ed by our abil­i­ty to at­tract the best avail­able tal­ent to the var­i­ous lead­er­ship po­si­tions in the pub­lic sec­tor, which is the in­sti­tu­tion charged with the ex­e­cu­tion of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy. As I said then and will re­it­er­ate now, com­pen­sa­tion, al­though not the on­ly mo­ti­vat­ing fac­tor, plays a nat­ur­al and un­de­ni­able role in at­tract­ing the ide­al can­di­dates to crit­i­cal pub­lic ser­vice po­si­tions. It fol­lows, there­fore, that the com­pen­sa­tion pack­age at­tached to these po­si­tions should al­so re­flect their sen­si­tiv­i­ty and im­por­tance in the wider gov­ern­men­tal con­text.”

He added, “Fur­ther, the un­der­valu­ing of min­is­ters’ salaries has a tag-on ef­fect on the salaries of our per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and re­sults in many of our se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials be­ing com­pen­sat­ed far be­low the pri­vate sec­tor stan­dard. This per­pet­u­ates a lev­el of dis­par­i­ty that is un­healthy and con­tin­ues to im­pede the gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to at­tract the best and bright­est to these po­si­tions.

“If there­fore, there is op­po­si­tion to the idea of in­creas­ing min­is­ters’ salaries, is it that we en­vi­sion an al­ter­na­tive sce­nario where per­ma­nent sec­re­taries are paid more than min­is­ters?” This, of course, is in­con­ceiv­able and would re­sult in a wage struc­ture ir­reg­u­lar­i­ty that would al­most cer­tain­ly be in­im­i­cal to the pub­lic in­ter­est.”

When con­tact­ed, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told Guardian Me­dia the en­tire coun­try knows she re­ject­ed the salary in­crease and her salary is more than enough to live on.

She said, “It is wrong for the se­nior lead­er­ship of this coun­try to say that all cit­i­zens must share the eco­nom­ic bur­den and hold strain but then give them­selves a raise in pay. It is my po­si­tion that the Prime Min­is­ter, the Pres­i­dent, and the Op­po­si­tion Leader should not re­ceive any in­creas­es be­cause, as se­nior lead­ers, we should set an ex­am­ple to our cit­i­zens that we are all in this to­geth­er and we will al­so make the same sac­ri­fices that are be­ing asked of our cit­i­zens ... Fur­ther, the salaries that these three of­fices cur­rent­ly re­ceive are more than enough for the of­fice­hold­ers to live com­fort­ably.”

The SRC

But who are the mem­bers of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion? Ac­cord­ing to the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, Nicole Fer­reira-Aaron was sworn in as SRC chair­man in No­vem­ber 2021. San­dra Mar­chak was sworn in as a mem­ber in Feb­ru­ary 2022, and Charles Mar­tin de Gannes was sworn in as a mem­ber in Oc­to­ber 2022.

Guardian Me­dia made sev­er­al at­tempts to reach Fer­reira-Aaron last week but was un­suc­cess­ful.