Ali­cia Llanos

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke says the Gov­ern­ment will on­ly need to find an ex­tra $1 bil­lion to meet the union's de­mands. He was ad­dress­ing pub­lic ser­vants on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day, af­ter meet­ing with Stephanie Lewis, the Gov­ern­ment's Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO).

Duke said the Gov­ern­ment cur­rent­ly spends $2.2 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly on pub­lic ser­vants' salaries and would on­ly have to "pull out" an ex­tra bil­lion in the bud­get to meet their wage de­mands. Ad­dress­ing the crowd, he said: "With that ex­tra bil­lion, you (pub­lic ser­vants) do not need to find a bailout man or woman!" Duke said the ex­tra $1 bil­lion would en­sure a clean­er a $7,000 salary, a cler­i­cal of­fi­cer, $8,400, and a cus­toms of­fi­cer, $10,000.

He chas­tised the Gov­ern­ment for say­ing $3 bil­lion would "flat­ten the econ­o­my." Duke went on to ques­tion the Gov­ern­ment's pri­or­i­ties, say­ing it could find the mon­ey to build a tun­nel from Tu­na­puna to Mara­cas, but could not find just $1 bil­lion to pay their em­ploy­ees. He said the one per cent of­fered by the CPO would to­tal $200 mil­lion a year and the Gov­ern­ment was will­ing to pay a named con­trac­tor $200 mil­lion "in one go" for air­port re­pairs. Dis­cussing the meet­ing he had with the CPO, he said she was to­tal­ly "un­pre­pared" to hold talks. "The CPO re­cit­ed the lines she has been recit­ing over the last two ses­sions of ne­go­ti­a­tions, noth­ing be­yond one per cent," he said. Duke said the CPO then shift­ed ne­go­ti­a­tions from wage in­creas­es to al­lowances. "We told her we do not mind freez­ing our al­lowances, but do not freeze out al­lowances," he said.

Duke said they told her to for­get the five per cent in­creas­es on al­lowances and put that five per cent on to the salaries. He said she told him she would have to go back and re­cal­cu­late the fig­ures. He again called on pub­lic ser­vants to gath­er in their num­bers next week Tues­day for "Black­out Tues­day re­loaded." Duke said told the crowd to con­tin­ue work­ing for 4.8 min­utes, one per cent of a day. He said: "Go to work and scratch yuh bum bum...that's what peo­ple say you do any­way, so prove them right, go to work and scratch yuh bum bum." When con­tact­ed for a com­ment, the Guardian was in­formed that the CPO was un­able to give a com­ment. Present at yes­ter­day's protest was MP for Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral Amery Browne. Browne said: "I am here to demon­strate my sol­i­dar­i­ty with our cit­i­zens."