The Leader of the Opposition Bharrat Jagdeo today slammed the payment of controversial salary increases to PPP/C MPs. He noted that the PPP/C had said it won’t be accepting these increases.
He further said that the payment of the increases contravenes the law as the relevant order has not yet been laid in parliament.
A statement from the Leader of the Opposition follows:
Several PPP/C Members of Parliament on Tuesday night received by hand, their payslips from the Parliament Office for the month of October, 2015. To their surprise, they observed that they have been paid salary increases.
This was done notwithstanding the fact the Leader of the Opposition and indeed, several Members of Parliament of the PPP/C have stated publicly nearly two weeks ago that they will not be accepting this increase in their salaries. In fact, on Monday 19th October, 2015, we issued a statement signalling our unequivocal rejection of these salary increases as well as expressing our intention to lay a motion in the National Assembly seeking to reverse and annul all the salary increases which were the subject of an Order of the Minister of Finance issued under Ministers, Members Of The National Assembly And Special Offices (Emoluments) Act.
The law requires that this Order must receive the approval of the National Assembly before it can take effect. Our motion is intended to call upon the National Assembly not to approve these increases but to reverse them.
The Government, by hastily paying these increases in salaries to themselves, is clearly subverting the role of the National Assembly, violating the Standing Orders and contravening the law. All of this is designed to defeat the PPP/C’s efforts to challenge these unconscionable salary increases in the National Assembly. The decision to pay themselves these salary increases was made in similarly clandestine circumstances. No public announcement was made at any Cabinet Press Briefings or anywhere else although the decision was made some time ago. The Nation came by this information by a surreptitious Extraordinary publication in the Official Gazette.
We are again witnessing similar trickery and deception. But this will not stop us from proceeding with our Motion in the National Assembly and from pursuing every other available avenue to annul and reverse these reprehensible salary increases which we now realize have been paid in violation of the law and Parliamentary norms and practices.
