Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

For­mer head of the pub­lic ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas and for­mer In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Mar­tin Daly are call­ing on the Gov­ern­ment to lim­it pro­posed salary and pen­sion in­creas­es to judges and MPs to an in­ter­im pe­ri­od, pend­ing de­ter­mi­na­tion of the mat­ter by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion, which is the con­sti­tu­tion­al body re­spon­si­ble for salary and oth­er in­creas­es.Their call was made in a let­ter to all sen­a­tors yes­ter­day, on the eve of to­day's sched­uled de­bate on the Re­tir­ing Al­lowances (Leg­isla­tive Ser­vice) (Amend­ment) and the Judges Salaries and Pen­sions (Amend­ment) bills in the Up­per House. The bills, which seek to ap­prove sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es for judges and MPs, were passed with the sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on June 13.The move by the two was un­like­ly to have any ef­fect on the out­come of to­day's de­bate. The bills will not be put to the vote as they are mon­ey bills which can­not be ve­toed by the Sen­ate. For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj al­so op­posed the move yes­ter­day. There have been pub­lic ob­jec­tions to the mea­sure in the me­dia.

Mooni­lal: 60-plus MPs, 15 judges to ben­e­fit

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House Dr Roodal Mooni­lal said over 60 MPs and 15 judges stood to ben­e­fit at present from the pro­posed pen­sion plans. Asked to jus­ti­fy the hefty in­creas­es, Mooni­lal said: "It is in­tend­ed to bring judges' and MPs' pen­sions in­to some mea­sure of de­cen­cy and to pre­vent fur­ther hard­ships to judges and re­tired leg­is­la­tors." Mooni­lal will present the leg­is­la­tion dur­ing to­day's sit­ting which be­gins at 11.30 am.Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, he said: "These dis­tin­guished gen­tle­men de­serve their opin­ion and in­ter­pre­ta­tion," adding that the "gov­ern­ment has start­ed the process of en­hanc­ing pen­sion arrange­ments for sev­er­al cat­e­gories of pub­lic em­ploy­ees."We in­tend to meet and treat with all pub­lic-sec­tor work­ers who in their post-em­ploy life re­quire a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing. We are not ex­clud­ing one group for an­oth­er. All will be dealt with in a com­pre­hen­sive man­ner."Mooni­lal al­so said that an MP's pen­sion was "a con­trib­u­to­ry one, at six per cent a month, while oth­er pub­lic of­fi­cers don't make di­rect con­tri­bu­tions."

Mixed feel­ings on hikes

One In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, David Small, said yes­ter­day that while he un­der­stood Du­mas's and Daly's con­cern, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans have no one to bar­gain for them. Small said the ex­ist­ing sys­tem in­volv­ing the SRC was not work­ing well and he want­ed to know what should be done in the mean­time. But for­mer chair­man of the Pub­lic and Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sions Christo­pher Thomas said the pas­sage of the bills ap­peared to "con­sti­tute a cir­cum­ven­tion of the pro­vi­sions of the Con­sti­tu­tion."In a let­ter to the ed­i­tor, which is pub­lished on Page A29 to­day, he said: "The cir­cum­ven­tion of our Con­sti­tu­tion for what­ev­er caus­es is the surest path to so­cial dis­qui­et and a chal­lenge to the pre­scribed or­der."

Let­ter to sen­a­tors

The Re­tir­ing Al­lowances (Leg­isla­tive Ser­vice) (Amend­ment) Bill and the Judges Salaries and Pen­sions (Amend­ment) Bill re­cent­ly passed by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives have, un­sur­pris­ing­ly and right­ly, set off a firestorm of pub­lic protest.Among oth­ers, is­sues of fair­ness and eq­ui­ty, of con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty – for ex­am­ple the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers, the func­tions and per­for­mance of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate na­ture of the mea­sures – have been raised.If these two pieces of leg­is­la­tion are car­ried for­ward, they may in the fu­ture have to be set­tled in the courts of law as well as in those of pub­lic opin­ion.

We do not op­pose the prin­ci­ple of en­hanced ben­e­fits for judges and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans. We em­pha­sise how­ev­er that there are oth­er re­tired per­sons such as mag­is­trates and pub­lic ser­vants who, for many years, and in sev­er­al cas­es for decades, have served this coun­try con­sci­en­tious­ly and well, and who de­serve pen­sions high­er than the ones they re­ceive at present.For in­stance, there is at least one re­tired per­ma­nent sec­re­tary who is now a cen­te­nar­i­an and whose pen­sion is less than that of the de­ceased judge men­tioned in the de­bate on these bills. Is his age to be held against him? There are al­so re­tirees, for­mer par­lia­men­tar­i­ans among them, whose need for cost­ly med­ical care is con­stant.

We feel that the ap­proach hasti­ly tak­en by the House is like­ly to lead to more prob­lems for T&T as a whole than it solves for a cho­sen few.We should all won­der about the prece­dent be­ing set. What pos­si­ble im­pact on our in­sti­tu­tions, our econ­o­my and our democ­ra­cy might there be as a re­sult of this de­ci­sion by per­sons whom we elect­ed to serve us and who are now seen as serv­ing them­selves at our ex­pense, and, more­over, to be do­ing so to the ex­clu­sion of per­sons sim­i­lar­ly cir­cum­stanced?Eq­ui­table salary and pen­sion re­form for the ju­di­cia­ry and for cer­tain pub­lic of­fice hold­ers can­not sen­si­bly be done in the piece­meal, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and hasty way adopt­ed by the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Giv­en the con­sti­tu­tion­al po­si­tion of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion, we strong­ly urge that the leg­is­la­ture should lim­it its in­ter­ven­tion to the ex­tent of in­ter­im pro­vi­sions de­signed to take care of the ur­gent needs of the di­rect­ly af­fect­ed per­sons – for­mer judges, mag­is­trates, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, pub­lic of­fi­cers, etc and their sur­viv­ing spous­es or co-habi­tants – on clear­ly de­fined bases, such as length of ser­vice, the ef­fect of cost of liv­ing over a de­fined pe­ri­od and com­pas­sion­ate need aris­ing out of ill­ness.We are copy­ing this let­ter to all mem­bers of the Sen­ate.

Busi­ness sec­tor­wants clar­i­fi­ca­tion

Mem­bers of the busi­ness sec­tor are call­ing on all arms of the leg­is­la­ture to con­sid­er care­ful­ly their de­ci­sion while de­bat­ing the Judges Salaries and Pen­sions Amend­ment Bill and the Re­tir­ing Al­lowances (Leg­isla­tive Ser­vice) Bill to­day.The call was made yes­ter­day by the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce, T&T Coali­tion of Ser­vice In­dus­tries, Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (TTCIC) and the Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion.In a press re­lease is­sued as the Joint Cham­bers Group, ques­tions were raised as to whether there had been enough con­sul­ta­tion on the mat­ter be­fore the de­ci­sion was made."In light of our slow eco­nom­ic growth and giv­en the fact that the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance had sig­nalled his in­ten­tion in 2013 to re­duce our fis­cal deficit, with the com­po­nents mak­ing up this deficit, in­clud­ing re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, such as salaries, wages and pen­sions, is it wise to as­sent to all of these in­creas­es at this time?" the group asked. "We un­der­stand that retroac­tive pay­ments will al­so ap­ply and this is of great con­cern to this group. We ques­tion whether these costs have been com­pre­hen­sive­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to de­ter­mine the true cost to the Trea­sury, and, if so, we call for full pub­lic dis­clo­sure of these costs," it added.

The role of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) al­so re­mained un­clear in the process, the group said. It not­ed: "Any in­creas­es in pen­sions for those tar­get­ed in this bill must be tied in with our cur­rent cost of liv­ing and what the coun­try can re­al­is­ti­cal­ly af­ford to pay with­out be­ing a bur­den on the na­tion's trea­sury."We be­lieve that at the helm of the gov­ern­ment leg­isla­tive agen­da should be the con­tin­u­ing ef­forts to see the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment Bill be­come law and push­ing for­ward the cam­paign fi­nanc­ing agen­da, both of which, if left un­treat­ed, can be detri­men­tal to our na­tion's ef­forts at im­prov­ing our rank­ing on many in­ter­na­tion­al in­dices."We be­lieve that the gov­ern­ment should al­so be fo­cus­ing on crime re­duc­tion mea­sures, as the mur­der toll con­tin­ues to rise on a dai­ly ba­sis, with in­dis­crim­i­nate shoot­ings oc­cur­ring at any time of the day, and a low de­tec­tion rate con­tin­u­ing to plague us."

The Joint Cham­ber Group not­ed that due to its mem­bers' con­cerns and those raised by oth­ers in so­ci­ety, the Gov­ern­ment should al­low the bills to lapse to al­low for fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion, ven­ti­la­tion and con­sid­er­a­tion of the is­sues in­volved and im­pact of their pas­sage."Since the Par­lia­ment is due to go on re­cess short­ly and these bills en­joy cross-par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal sup­port, we con­sid­er this to be the most pru­dent course of ac­tion, as it will not af­fect their even­tu­al pas­sage in the next ses­sion of Par­lia­ment if that is still the de­sire of the Leg­is­la­ture," the joint group said.