Faced with the prospect of a bar­rage of crit­i­cism from the In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors, that was al­ready en­gaged in by sig­nif­i­cant news­mak­ers and a pub­lic cyn­i­cal about the mo­tives of a gov­ern­ment bring­ing leg­is­la­tion to en­hance the pen­sion ben­e­fits of MPs and judges, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has done the sen­si­ble thing and tem­porar­i­ly put a halt to de­bate on the bills.

As a means of ap­peas­ing con­flict and achiev­ing a more bal­anced ap­proach to up­dat­ing the pen­sions of these pub­lic of­fi­cers, the PM has sug­gest­ed re­fer­ring the bills to a se­lect com­mit­tee of the Sen­ate.The com­mit­tee should seek the ad­vice of ex­perts in the field of ac­tu­ar­i­al sci­ence and oth­er such pro­fes­sion­als in an ef­fort to cal­cu­late the long-term im­pact of the pro­ject­ed in­creas­es on Gov­ern­ment's fis­cal op­er­a­tions and com­par­isons to the pen­sions of sim­i­lar­ly placed work­ers.

The ab­sence of such facts and fig­ures to back up the bills is one of their weak points. And as point­ed out by re­tired head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas, this con­sul­ta­tive ap­proach should have been adopt­ed be­fore the bills were brought to the Par­lia­ment.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers