(Trinidad Express) Despite criticisms, the Keith Rowley Government has decided to accept proposed salary increases recommended by the Salaries Review Commission (SRC) in its 120 Report.
Making the announcement at yesterday’s post-Cabinet news conference at Whitehall in Port of Spain, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley said it was 13 years since the senior office-holders falling under the purview of the SRC had received salary increases. He said he was accepting the responsibility—“and maybe the wrath”—of those who gave him the responsibility of Prime Minister. “I bear that cross without fear of retribution,” he said.
When implemented, the PM’s salary will be $87,847 per month.
Rowley said one of the first things his Government did on assuming office in 2015 was to pay public servants a 15% increase in salary and a backpay of $6.5 billion at a time when terms and conditions of top office-holders were frozen.
Included in these top office-holders are the President, Prime Minister, ministers, Opposition Leader, parliamentarians, members of the Judiciary, senior public servants such as heads of the protective services, permanent secretaries, members of the THA and members of commissions, among others.
The Prime Minister said he expected the Opposition Leader to seek to extract as much political juice as possible out of the situation.
He said following the acceptance of the SRC report, what is left to be done is for the Minister of Finance to issue the appropriate circular to Government ministries and departments to implement the increases.
“To come to the point of whether or not the Government will accept the findings of the SRC and be damned, I want to say…If there are those who feel that the country’s leadership is of no value, produces no value, and should be ashamed to accept the recommendations of a Commission whose jobs it is to have done the work and to make recommendations to the Cabinet…I take full responsibility for advising the Cabinet that after 13 years of work, that the members of the Government who run this country—a $60 billion enterprise—that the acceptance of the SRC Report is the matter for the Cabinet….Our acceptance (of the SRC Report) is a political issue; always has and always will be. And that is why today, for telling the country that we will accept the recommendation, I am prepared to deal with it as a political issue, because it is a political issue. And that is why I am not surprised that the Opposition Leader is out of the blocks trying to get a leg up in this political issue,” Rowley said.
He said the current Opposition Leader, having previously held the position of prime minister, was already taken care of under the Prime Ministers’ Pension Act which guarantees her a prime ministerial pension equivalent to the salary of a prime minister. Asked whether he believed a salary of $87,000 was a fair salary for a prime minister, Rowley said whether it was fair or not was not the point, since those (the SRC) who had been given the assignment to do it, had done it.