Richard?Lord

Fresh moves are un­der­way to in­crease the salaries of the Prime Min­is­ter, cab­i­net min­is­ters, the Op­po­si­tion Leader and all oth­er MPs.

This is as a Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) con­sul­tant met with se­nior Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion MPs last week to ini­ti­ate the process for the hike.

Among those who at­tend­ed the one-hour meet­ing, which was held in Par­lia­ment last week, were House Speak­er Bridgid An­nisette-George, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Franklin Khan, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds and Op­po­si­tion MPs Gan­ga Singh, Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie and Ra­mona Ram­di­al.

An em­ploy­ee of the Hays Group so­licit­ed the views of those present on the need for a pay hike.

Guardian un­der­stands that both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion MPs came out in favour of the pay hike.

In 2011, the PSC un­der­took a sim­i­lar ex­er­cise and three years lat­er, in 2014 when the hike was rec­om­mend­ed by the PSC, then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that the Cab­i­net had re­ject­ed the in­creas­es.

She had said then that any pay hike would not have been sup­port­ed by the wider pop­u­la­tion.

One of the con­tentious is­sues over the past years has been whether an MP works full-time or part-time. Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had said pre­vi­ous­ly that the work of MPs is full-time and this should be re­flect­ed in the pay. Since as­sum­ing pow­er in Sep­tem­ber 2015 the Gov­ern­ment has in­creased the num­ber of Joint Se­lect Par­lia­men­tary over­sight com­mit­tees to 17 which has sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creased the work­load of min­is­ters and MPs. There are six Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ings sched­uled for to­day; four avail­able for pub­lic at­ten­dance and two will be in cam­era.

Op­po­si­tion to hike

The move is be­ing met with im­me­di­ate op­po­si­tion from for­mer head of the pub­lic ser­vice Regi­nald Du­mas. Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Du­mas said while the SRC, an in­de­pen­dent body, was free to make its rec­om­men­da­tions for a salary in­crease for MPs they should not be ac­cept­ed by the Par­lia­ment.

Du­mas said, "Giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion in T&T an in­crease in MPs' salaries would send an en­tire­ly wrong sig­nal to cit­i­zens many of whom have lost their jobs in re­cent months and oth­ers ex­pect­ed to lose their jobs in the fu­ture." He said the move comes "at a time when the cost of liv­ing has gone up be­cause of new tax­es be­ing im­posed on food and oth­er com­modi­ties."

Du­mas said any ac­cep­tance of a salary hike by MPs at this time would be wrong.

Du­mas said the fact that more MPs were serv­ing on an in­creased num­ber of over­sight com­mit­tees in Par­lia­ment was not a good enough rea­son for ac­cept­ing any pay hike at this time. He said that there are many peo­ple serv­ing with­out pay on bod­ies such as the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board.

The for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter said he was "not im­pressed" by the ar­gu­ment that MPs were do­ing more work and should be paid high­er salaries.

He said a par­lia­men­tar­i­an should not on­ly think about him­self or her­self but about all of T&T in the pre­vail­ing cir­cum­stances. He said he want­ed to know why there should be a pay hike for MPs in the wake of the gov­ern­ment's un­prece­dent­ed with­draw­al of funds from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund and a pro­pos­al by Im­bert to go abroad on a Road Show to get mon­ey for the coun­try.

Sup­port for in­crease

But for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Con­rad Enill said it was be­cause of the need to prop­er­ly man­age the econ­o­my a pay hike should be ac­cept­ed by the MPs if and when it is rec­om­mend­ed by the SRC.

Enill, who served in pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tions as min­is­ter of En­er­gy and min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, said gov­ern­ment min­is­ters were re­quired to man­age bil­lions of dol­lars on be­half of the cit­i­zens but were not be­ing prop­er­ly com­pen­sat­ed.

"The salary con­sid­er­a­tions for gov­ern­ment min­is­ters have been for a very long time not con­sis­tent with the jobs they have to do," Enill added in a brief in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day.

He said it was for that rea­son the best can­not be at­tract­ed to serve and even if they were at­tract­ed they did not stay.

"The coun­try de­serves the best tal­ent that is avail­able but tal­ent can­not be dis­crim­i­nat­ed on the ba­sis of pay," he in­sist­ed.

Enill said the ar­gu­ment that gov­ern­ment min­is­ters should be com­pen­sat­ed like any oth­er work­er was fool­ish and un­ac­cept­able.

He said a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter was re­quired to do the same for the na­tion as a man­ag­ing di­rec­tor or chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer does for a large com­pa­ny.

Ac­cord­ing to Enill, a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, in some in­stances, has to man­age 15 dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines, 3,000 peo­ple "and you have to make de­ci­sions in the best in­ter­est of T&T."

He said that re­quires a cer­tain lev­el of com­pe­tence which has a val­ue in the mar­ket­place.

Enill said it was "on­ly in T&T that we treat MPs like they are not en­ti­tled to salaries and perks of their of­fice. That needs to be changed."

Enill said, "Un­til we fix that we are not go­ing to move to­wards democ­ra­cy that pro­vides us with the best peo­ple to give us the best work."

He said, "At this point they are not be­ing paid what they are worth."

MORE IN­FO

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