Dear Editor,
Please permit me space in your newspaper to respond to a missive on social media written by APNU+AFC’s Juretha Fernandes MP, where she sought to discredit Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo’s assertions that public servants would receive a salary increase.
In the VP’s Facebook post he stated that there is over $10 billion under the head “revision of wages of salaries” which caters for salary increases. To counter, Ms. Fernandes was adamant that there is no mention of this heading in any of the three budget estimate volumes. She then concluded that “the 2021 budget did not cater for any increase, revision or otherwise, in public servants wages and salaries. But the PPP must now find a way to fix such a grave omission in an attempt to salvage their tarnished public image.”
Now here are the facts: Ms. Fernandes is partially correct – those specific words, “revision of wages of salaries”, do not appear in the budget estimates. What the MP ought to have known is that the line item 6141 to which the vice president refers was changed from “revision of wages of salaries” to “other employment costs” in 2014. As such, she should have examined this line to ascertain whether funds were budgeted before coming to a conclusion.
Extracted from 2014 Budget estimates Volume 1
Secondly, there was no omission – and absolutely no need to fix anything. In the 2021 Budget estimates, under the same 6141 line item, $10,094,889,000 i.e. as correctly stated by the VP over $10 billion is budgeted for salary increases.
Sincerely,
John Antonio Edghill