(Office of the Prime Minister release) Prime Minister and First Vice President Moses Nagamootoo this evening said that he found it unconscionable that salary increases for PPP/C presidents and ministers amounted to over 386% and 220% respectively over a 17 year period while that party was in government.
The Prime Minister commented following the revelation of the statistics by Minister of Finance Winston Jordan in the National Assembly in response to a question posed by government Member of Parliament Mr. Jermaine Figueira.
Figueira asked the Finance Minister to present to the National Assembly the annual increases in salaries for public servants and ministers and presidents for the period 1998 to 2014.
In his response Minister Jordan revealed that total salary increases for public servants for the period amounts to 164.7%, mainly in single digit increments. However Minister Jordan revealed that the salaries of the then PPP ministers of government increased, over the same period, by a whopping 220.5%, some 55% more than the public servants increase.
Minister Jordan further revealed that the salary of the president, during the same period increased by a mammoth 386.5%, more than 220% over the increase in public servants for the same period. Now Opposition Leader Mr. Bharrat Jagdeo served as President from 1999 until 2011. Mr. Donald Ramotar served as President from 2011 to 2015.
“It is utterly disgraceful that the post-Jagan Cabinet bureaucracy grabbed an average 300% salary hike during 1998 and 2014,” Prime Minister Nagamootoo said before leaving Parliament Buildings last evening following the revelations by the Finance Minister.
“They ‘helped’ the poor public servants over this period by giving a total of 164%, mostly in 5% doses but in 17 years, the PPP Ministers were paid a more than handsome 220% salary increase,” Prime Minister Nagamootoo reiterated.
‘The Presidents helped themselves to the full trough by taking 386% increase in salary. Now we know how fat these cats had become in political office,” the Prime Minister said.
In 2006 alone the then President Bharrat Jagdeo was given an enormous 273% salary increase while in the same year ministers benefitted from an 89.5% increase. The largest single increase public servants received was in 1999 when a 31% increased was granted. In 2000 a 26% increase was provided but for the next 14 years only on two occasions were increases in the double digits. In eight of those years the public servants salary increase was 5%, including in 2006 when the President and his ministers received an immense ‘top up’.
