Dear Editor,
We all know that hindsight is 20/20 vision and that the dilemma of raising the bridge versus controlling the flood must be confronted from time to time. As reported in the media, the Government felt obliged to raise the salary of the Prime Minister, Vice-Presidents, Ministers, et al in order to remove the anomalies in the salaries payable to the incumbents in the upper echelons of the Government vis-à-vis what is paid to the Attorney General. The ideal would have been a comprehensive Job Evaluation exercise.
In the absence of the latter, an alternative solution was the “red-circling” approach as provided for in professional salary administration principles and practices. ”Red-circling” in this case would have meant holding the AG´s salary at its historical (not objectively/systematically evaluated) level until incremental increases in the related salaries caught up or achieved job-evaluated relativities.
As has been reported, the abnormally high salary attached to the AG’s post goes back many decades when, because of the unusual demands and circumstances at the time, it was necessary to ‘import’ a Guyanese legal luminary with the unique competences required at that particular time. This brilliant Guyanese had to be lured from his high paying position overseas to discharge the unprecedented responsibilities required of the post given the unusual context at that time. It was obviously a unique situation that required unconventional treatment.
The unusual salary paid then should have been discontinued when the circumstances changed as indeed they did and the incumbent demitted the said office and returned overseas. The unfortunate error or oversight in not doing so before does not mean that it should have been continued ad infinitum –certainly not till this day.
Therefore, instead of entertaining the flood of unprecedented salary increases to correct the untenable and unjustifiable differentials between the AG´s salary and his colleagues, and given all the circumstantial considerations which cannot be ignored at this stage of Guyana’s affordability, the more equitable solution would have been to ‘hold’ or reduce the salary level attached to the AG’s post before a new AG was appointed.
Reduction of the disproportionate relativities would have been initiated and the Government would have been spared the millstone it has now put around its neck which future Governments in relatively poor Guyana would have to carry. Certainly, the current groundswell of acrimony would have been avoided thus allowing the Government to focus on the important and urgent task of attending to the development of Guyana.
Yours faithfully,
Nowrang Persaud
