(Jamaica Observer) Prime Minister Bruce Golding on Tuesday announced that 10,000 jobs will be slashed from the public sector over the next five years under a rationalisation programme that will save the country between J$40 billion and J$50 billion over the period and improve efficiency and productivity.
The announcement ended months of speculation about the fate of the island’s public sector workers and laid to rest concerns that as much as 30,000 persons could lose their jobs in the short term.
Making his presentation in the 2011/12 budget debate in Parliament, Golding also said that the rationalisation programme will push the public sector workforce from 118,000 down to about 109,000 on a phased basis over the next five years, with some posts being eliminated, privatised or outsourced.
“In implementing these changes, close consultation will be maintained with the public sector unions to minimise as far as possible the effects of the dislocation to the affected employees… we will have to reckon with the compensation costs of this exercise in terms of retirement benefits and compensation to those not eligible for retirement,” he said.
The announcement comes at a time when government is facing pressure from public sector workers to pay up the seven per cent wage increase owed to them since 2009. Government has repeatedly asked public sector workers to hold strain, promising to pay the outstanding funds some time in the future.
Golding said that 5,137 persons were now due for retirement, 10,520 are “eligible, but not yet due” for retirement, and 12,800 between the ages of 50 and 55 can retire without loss of pension benefits. However, he said that even if persons opted for early retirement, that will not fully account for the targeted reduction in staffing. “Where persons retire from positions that can be eliminated in the rationalisation exercise, those positions will not be filled,” he said. “However, some of those who will retire will have to be replaced, especially in vital areas such as education, health services and security. Some employees will be reassigned to other ministries and departments which may be below their required staff levels.”
The prime minister also countered a claim by Opposition Leader Portia Simpson Miller that 100,000 workers had lost their jobs since 2008. He said that Statistical Institute of Jamaica data show that the figure was 58,000.
But in a response on Tuesday afternoon, Simpson Miller insisted that Golding “has not been truthful in the statistics he has provided, especially with respect to unemployment and poverty”.
She re-affirmed the figures quoted in her Budget presentation last Thursday and called on the prime minister to check his own figures with the Planning Institute of Jamaica, “and importantly to check the figures he provided in his budget debate presentation against statements on the subject that he has previously made”.
