The People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) is calling for the Government to immediately increase wages and salaries of public servants to at least $70,000 monthly, while also urging the government to address the issue of unemployment in the country.
At the party’s weekly press conference held yesterday at Congress Place, Co-Chairman Basil Williams reading from a prepared statement underscored the importance of the issue and accused the government of failing to adequately address it.
In the press statement, the party said that “whenever the question of increased salaries and wages for Guyanese workers is raised, the reaction of the Jagdeo Administration is to the percentages of the increases it allegedly gave to them.”
The party added that “apart from the fact that these increases do not empower workers to cope with the cost of living, this approach also obscures the real misery of the condition of the workers.” The PNCR stated that a look beyond “the misleading statistics put out by the Government” reveals that “public servants cannot afford such basic things as transportation, electricity, and the purchase of adequate amounts of food for their families”
The PNCR said if the existence of public servants is to be sustainable, “the average public servant needs to earn a minimum salary of $ 70,000 per month.”
The party also called for the government to address the problem of unemployment and stated that the unemployment level of young people may be as high as 45 percent. The PNCR also renewed its call for the reintroduction of the Guyana National Service, even as it argued that “if the President’s Youth Choice Initiative was intended to create employment for young people it has signally failed.”
“Unemployed youths are most likely to engage in anti-social behaviour, such as crime or the consumption and sale of drugs” the party stated even as it called for “a more carefully thought out approach based on a realistic assessment of the condition of the young people of Guyana.”
