Joshua Seemu­n­gal

Se­nior Re­porter

joshua.seemu­n­gal

@guardian.co.tt

There has been sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic back­lash to­wards the rec­om­men­da­tion by the lat­est Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s (SRC) re­port to in­crease the salaries of sev­er­al se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, the Op­po­si­tion Leader and the Pres­i­dent.

The com­mis­sion pro­posed a salary in­crease to $87,847 per month from $59,680 for the Prime Min­is­ter, but how does the PM’s cur­rent salary com­pare to the wages of CEOs at ma­jor state en­ter­pris­es? Well, not favourably.

The av­er­age salary of the CEO’s of three well-known state com­pa­nies: the Wa­ter And Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny and the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go is 156 per cent of the Prime Min­is­ter’s cur­rent salary.

The new chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of WASA Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day is set to earn $100,000 a month plus perks. Her­itage’s CEO Erik Kesku­la makes around $180,000 a month plus perks, while, as of ear­ly 2019, the TSTT’s CEO re­ceived $180,000 per month. That’s an av­er­age of $153,000 among the three.

The SRC’s pro­posed salary of $87,847 for the PM would still be around 43 per cent less than the av­er­age salary of those three CEOs.

The ‘lat­est’ da­ta for the pop­u­la­tion’s av­er­age month­ly salary comes from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s House­hold Bud­getary Sur­vey (HBS) con­duct­ed in 2008 and 2009.

Ac­cord­ing to the sur­vey, the av­er­age month­ly house­hold in­come in Trinidad and To­ba­go was $9,201. The HBS con­duct­ed a new HBS in 2023, but the re­sults are yet to be pub­lished. The sur­vey is sup­posed to be con­duct­ed at least every five years.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s cur­rent salary is 549 per cent more than the av­er­age cit­i­zen’s (based on the HBS da­ta from 2008/2009).

If one us­es a high­er av­er­age cit­i­zen salary of around $11,000, the PM’s present salary would be ap­prox­i­mate­ly 443 per cent more, while the SRC’s pro­posed salary for the PM would be around 699 per cent greater.

Com­par­a­tive­ly, the av­er­age CEO salary (based on the three state en­ter­pris­es) is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 1,100 per cent greater than an av­er­age month­ly salary of $11,000 per month. It is 1,346 per cent more than the HBS 2008/2009 av­er­age salary.

In ear­ly 2023, it was re­port­ed in WASA’s au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial re­port that the state com­pa­ny record­ed an ac­cu­mu­lat­ed deficit of more than $3 bil­lion. The au­dit­ed state­ment, end­ing Sep­tem­ber 2019, re­port­ed a $181 mil­lion loss.

Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um re­port­ed a prof­it af­ter tax of $1.11 bil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing Sep­tem­ber 30, 2022. The com­pa­ny re­port­ed a prof­it in the pre­vi­ous fi­nan­cial year of $682.7 mil­lion.

TSTT pro­duced a prof­it af­ter tax of US$19 mil­lion for the fi­nan­cial year end­ing March 31, 2024. The pre­vi­ous year the com­pa­ny re­port­ed a prof­it of US$14 mil­lion.

The con­ver­sa­tion about the PM’s salary comes at a time of a high cost of liv­ing in the coun­try, and union un­rest over un­set­tled salary ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Sev­er­al trade unions, in­clud­ing the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, re­ject­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s five per cent in­crease of­fer for the Jan­u­ary 2020 to De­cem­ber 2022 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

A group of pub­lic ser­vants, in­clud­ing prison of­fi­cers, po­lice of­fi­cers, teach­ers and the de­fence force, re­ceived a four per cent salary in­crease for the Jan­u­ary 2014 to De­cem­ber 2019 bar­gain­ing pe­ri­od.

The Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) (the ma­jor­i­ty union) and the Na­tion­al Union of Gov­ern­ment and Fed­er­at­ed Work­ers (NUGFW) did not ac­cept the Gov­ern­ment’s of­fer.

In late Oc­to­ber, scores of port work­ers took in­dus­tri­al ac­tion, protest­ing stalled wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, as well as health and safe­ty con­cerns. The work­ers are rep­re­sent­ed by the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union. Port work­ers in To­ba­go al­so protest­ed.

Mean­while, postal work­ers in­ten­si­fied protest ac­tion over salary in­creas­es that their union, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Work­ers Union, said were promised more than a decade ago. On Fri­day, pro­test­ers pick­et­ed the of­fice of Min­ster Im­bert.

If the SRC rec­om­men­da­tion is im­ple­ment­ed the PM’s present salary of would rise from $59,680 to $80,000 be­tween Oc­to­ber 2020 to Sep­tem­ber 2023, and then to $87,847 un­til Oc­to­ber 2023.

The Prime Min­is­ter would be en­ti­tled to over $1 mil­lion in back pay.

The Pres­i­dent’s salary would in­crease from $64,270 to $81,170.