The Minister of Finance has indicated that Government is yet to make a final decision on the SRC Report and is awaiting a revised version before doing so.
In an official statement, the Minister notes the 117th SRC Report is “the result of a job evaluation exercise that has taken over a decade to complete, and it is not a general or ordinary review of terms and conditions of employment of offices under the purview of the SRC.”
He sought to clarify what he described as “misconceptions” regarding the Government’s decision on the recommendations in the Report.
“It should be noted that the Government was faced with three choices in dealing with the 117th Report, namely (a) reject the Report in its entirety and request the SRC to redo the Job Evaluation Exercise from scratch, or (b) make its own adjustments to the recommendations in the Report without further reference to the SRC, or (c) ask the SRC to revisit and review what the Government considers to be the serious anomalies in the Report, before making a final decision,” Minister Imbert explained.
He stated: “The Government chose option (c), since option (a) might have taken another 10 years to complete, and, in view of the advisory role of the SRC and the resources available to it, option (b) was not appropriate at this stage.”
In his statement, the finance minister points out that there several areas of concern in the 117th Report of the Salaries Review Commission.
“The Government has made it clear that it is of the view that there are a number of serious anomalies in the Report, such as the recommendation that the salaries of Judges of the Supreme Court of Trinidad and Tobago be maintained at the same levels as in the last report of the SRC, i.e. that there be no increases for Judges of the High Court and the Court of Appeal since the 98th SRC Report was approved (with a reservation on transport facilities) in 2013, over 10 years ago,” he said.
“Another serious anomaly is that the SRC has recommended that the salaries of Industrial Court Judges be reduced, while there are some surprising increases such as the recommended 60% increase in the compensation package of the Leader of the Opposition,” he added.
Minister Imbert notes that Government has since received further correspondence from the Judiciary regarding the recommendations made by the SRC about certain of its senior administrative officers.
The Minister reiterated part of his statement of March 6, 2024, on the Report, highlighting the reasons why he had described some parts of it as “unacceptable”, to clear up the misconceptions he says are circulating in the public domain due to what he observed were misleading newspaper headlines, which suggested the Report had been rejected outright.
“The 117th Report of the SRC is unacceptable because of the serious and inexplicable anomalies that have emerged in the recommendations in the Report. The Cabinet believes it is necessary to alert the SRC to the existence of these anomalies. Therefore, the Cabinet intends to refer the 117th Report of the SRC back to the Commission with a list of anomalies so that it can revisit, review, and revise its recommendations and return a revised Report to the Cabinet via the President for its consideration,” the finance minister’s statement said.