Ali­cia Llanos

A dif­fer­ence of views as to what the coun­try can af­ford is the ma­jor is­sue be­hind the im­passe of pub­lic ser­vants' wage ne­go­ti­a­tions says Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an.

He was ad­dress­ing the me­dia yes­ter­day af­ter a loan sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny with the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank at the Min­istry of Fi­nance, Er­ic Williams Fi­nan­cial Com­plex, Port-of-Spain. Re­gard­ing Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke's con­vic­tion that the Gov­ern­ment can af­ford to pay pub­lic ser­vants a dou­ble dig­it in­crease, Dook­er­an said, "Clear­ly we have a dif­fer­ent view as to what the coun­try can af­ford at this time and that is es­sen­tial­ly where the de­bate is."

He had pre­vi­ous­ly said with the cur­rent eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment it was not fea­si­ble to pro­vide such a high wage in­crease as de­mand­ed. Dook­er­an said, "What we have done is pro­pose what we think are mat­ters that can be eas­i­ly ac­com­plished in our fi­nan­cial bal­ance sheet." He said these mat­ters in­clud­ed a con­sol­i­dat­ed Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance (Co­la) of four per cent.

Dook­er­an said they had be­gun look­ing in­to pro­vid­ing a com­pre­hen­sive med­ical plan and the re-clas­si­fi­ca­tion of jobs.

Pressed on whether he thought ne­go­ti­a­tions would be set­tled by year's end, Dook­er­an said, "I am still very op­ti­mistic that we can come to a meet­ing of the minds." He said, "The mat­ter is still on the ne­go­ti­a­tion ta­ble. There were some dif­fi­cult mo­ments at the last meet­ing and ne­go­ti­a­tions will re­sume next week." Re­spond­ing to Dook­er­an's com­ment on the dif­fer­ence of views, PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke said, "I think he is op­er­at­ing on out­dat­ed fi­nan­cial the­o­ries and prin­ci­ples."

He said Dook­er­an had put pub­lic ser­vants "down a road of hope­less­ness."

Duke held that pub­lic ser­vants should not be the ones who should be made to pay for fi­nan­cial mis­takes of oth­ers that have dam­aged the econ­o­my.