Akash Sama­roo

While the ma­jor­i­ty of Op­po­si­tion MPs re­main tight-lipped about their plans for the ex­tra mon­ey they are set to re­ceive in their month­ly salaries, three of them have pledged to fun­nel those funds in­to their con­stituen­cies.

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) re­ject­ed the rec­om­men­da­tions of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC), but with the Gov­ern­ment’s ac­cep­tance, the op­po­si­tion mem­bers are set to ben­e­fit whether they want to or not.

The 120th SRC re­port rec­om­mends the salary of a Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment go from $17,410 per month to $22,695. Their back­pay could be in the re­gion of $145,000 each.

Last Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said that their re­jec­tion of the im­proved pay pack­age was mere­ly for pub­lic spec­ta­cle as he al­leged that pri­vate­ly they were pes­ter­ing him to as­cer­tain if the Cab­i­net would green-light the SRC’s pro­pos­al.

But three Op­po­si­tion MPs, al­beit from the so-called ‘dis­si­dent’ group, said the ex­tra funds will go straight in­to their com­mu­ni­ties.

Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly said af­ter tax that will work out to about $3000 more.

“Al­ready the ma­jor­i­ty of my salary goes in­to the con­stituen­cy so this will not be treat­ed too dif­fer­ent­ly. It may be go­ing to­wards phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals; some peo­ple reach out and they need tablets they can­not af­ford or ham­pers. Some­times on the odd oc­ca­sion when some­one shows up, I have a kind of slush fund for books or gro­ceries or any­thing,” Ram­bal­ly ex­plained.

Ram­bal­ly told Guardian Me­dia this con­duct from the gov­ern­ment reeks of hypocrisy.

“You can­not have over 85 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion await­ing in­creas­es and back­pay for some, pos­si­bly for close to a decade, and these peo­ple have not got­ten monies,” he posit­ed.

Mean­while, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Dr Rai Rag­bir ex­pressed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments. The med­ical doc­tor by trade said his en­tire MP salary usu­al­ly goes to­wards ad­dress­ing the needs of his con­stituents, who he said are some of the poor­est in the na­tion.

“My area of Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la has a lot of in­di­gent peo­ple, a lot of needy peo­ple. Just this week a la­dy’s home burned down, and she has four chil­dren who lost every­thing. Who is go­ing to buy the books and uni­form? One child is writ­ing SEA, of course that is com­ing out of my pock­et. There’s an­oth­er per­son who aban­doned their chil­dren by a la­dy in my con­stituen­cy and she’s ask­ing for a wash­ing ma­chine to wash all the chil­dren’s clothes. That comes out of my pock­et.

“If you get an ex­tra four or five thou­sand it’s an op­por­tu­ni­ty to as­sist peo­ple in need. I took an oath on the Bible to help peo­ple,” he said.

And Na­pari­ma MP Rod­ney Charles said even though he’s not a part of the in­ner cir­cle again, he un­der­stands the UNC has not met to dis­cuss an of­fi­cial par­ty po­si­tion on the is­sue. How­ev­er, he has a plan for his mon­ey.

“I went to Na­pari­ma Col­lege, and I’ve al­ways thought about in­tro­duc­ing row­ing as a sport for sec­ondary schools. So, I have a thought for all the sec­ondary schools in San Fer­nan­do. If there can be an an­nu­al In­ter­col row­ing com­pe­ti­tion from the San Fer­nan­do Wharf, around Far­alon Rock, and back to the col­lege, as an an­nu­al thing, heav­i­ly sup­port­ed, that is some­thing I think I’d be in­ter­est­ed in,” Charles added.

The Na­pari­ma MP who is not seek­ing re-elec­tion said this week he is go­ing to meet with the San Fer­nan­do Yacht Club to make his dream a re­al­i­ty.

He al­so hailed Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray’s pro­pos­al for UNC MPs back pay to con­struct a head­quar­ters for the par­ty as a good plan.

The Prime Min­is­ter has al­ready in­di­cat­ed that the SRC’s re­port does not need Par­lia­men­tary ap­proval.