Dear Editor,
The shocking figure of $85,971 per month for an engineer was pulled from the same e-procurement website the government set up to rob the independent print media of ads in a barefaced attempt to destroy press freedom and democracy in turn. In a nation where the President allegedly earns effectively over $1,000,000 per month if tax exemption is taken into consideration, ministers reportedly earn at least $400,000 per month and select advisors and consultants working for the government reap amounts in excess of $600,000 per month, the government shamelessly pays an engineer this travesty of an income? The average engineer in the USA working for the public service earns about US$7500 per month. The President of the USA earns US$33,333 per month. US Cabinet officials earn US$16,333 per month. It is evident that Barack Obama earns 4.4 times more than an American engineer employed by the US government. A Cabinet official such as Hilary Clinton earns 2.18 times more than the same government engineer in the USA.
In Guyana President Bharrat Jagdeo’s reputed salary per month is 11.63 times more than that of an engineer employed by his government. A Guyanese Cabinet official’s reputed salary is at least 4.7 times that of the same engineer. A Guyana government engineer earns in a year just over what the President allegedly earns in a month. And the President does not even pay taxes. That engineer must pay all kinds of taxes and then VAT.
This is the price we are paying for incompetence, waste, mismanagement, corruption, disregard for the rule of law, moral degeneracy, arrogance and ignorance. We are paying politicians ridiculously more than we are paying men and women who can build, reconstruct, remodel and reshape our societies. We cannot watch those with illusions of grandeur build mansions to the sky when the real builders of the nation flee with their brainpower. Tell me why an engineer should remain in this nation when his government wants to pay him 4.7 times less than a Cabinet minister? A government that pays one of the biggest engineering companies in Guyana in excess of US$2000 per metre for riprap sea defence wants to pay its own engineer US$430 per month to live in the glare of VAT and a runaway cost of living? Why are we telling our children to go to school and get an education and become doctors, lawyers, engineers and professors when this is their fate in life? A US$430 per month job?
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
