Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Derek Ram­samooj says the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion should re­veal what met­rics it us­es to quan­ti­fy salary ad­just­ments.

His ques­tion comes af­ter the SRC pro­posed in­creas­es for this coun­try’s top of­fi­cials.

“The SRC needs to jus­ti­fy this rec­om­men­da­tion and does it equate to prac­tices in the Caribbean po­lit­i­cal space and glob­al po­lit­i­cal space.”

An­oth­er po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, said the pro­pos­als were pe­cu­liar giv­en the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion of the coun­try, as well as the cur­rent of­fers made by the State in wage ne­go­ti­a­tions around the coun­try.

“It is rather pe­cu­liar that the re­port, the 119th was sent back to the Salaries Re­views Com­mis­sion and brought back with in­creased ben­e­fits for these high-rank­ing of­fi­cials and in­creased by a lot for the Prime Min­is­ter in par­tic­u­lar,” said Ram­per­sad.

She said she was cu­ri­ous as to what would be the fi­nal de­ci­sion on the pro­pos­al, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the fact that the gen­er­al elec­tion is due in the com­ing year.

“The pop­u­la­tion, dis­grun­tled as they are be­ing thrown two per cent and four per cent in their faces now have to swal­low that the SRC re­port is rec­om­mend­ing more the Prime Min­is­ter,” she said.

Ram­per­sad added, “More than that, it is a slap in the face of the pop­u­la­tion who are fre­quent­ly be­ing told to ban your bel­ly and face ris­ing cost of food, trans­porta­tion, hous­ing and fu­el and can­not get for­eign ex­change and have to pay prop­er­ty tax and the salaries of these high-rank­ing min­is­ter are be­ing in­creased.”

In March, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­formed the Par­lia­ment that the SRC’s 117th re­port would be sent back for re-ex­am­i­na­tion, re­view, and re­vi­sion. Im­bert said then there were sev­er­al anom­alies that arose out of the job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise and com­pen­sa­tion sur­vey. 

He said this in­clud­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion that the salaries of judges of the Supreme Court be main­tained at the same lev­els as in the SRC’s last re­port.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA) po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith chal­lenged pub­lic of­fi­cials to take pay cuts. He called the sug­gest­ed salary in­creas­es pro­posed by the SRC a “bloody dis­grace” giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic land­scape of the coun­try.

“I would think, and I would hope and I would ex­pect that what should hap­pen is that every sin­gle of­fice hold­er should ask for a ten per cent cut in their salary based on what the coun­try is go­ing through right now. When I speak of the se­nior of­fice hold­ers, I mean the min­is­ters and the per­sons who are Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment,” said Grif­fith, who stat­ed that of­fi­cials like the Prime Min­is­ter al­ready had a large amount of their ex­pens­es cov­ered by the State.

He made the call at a press con­fer­ence where the NTA un­veiled six new cus­to­di­ans/prospec­tive can­di­dates for the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tions on Sat­ur­day.