The Guyana gov­ern­ment says pub­lic ser­vants will from Jan­u­ary 1 next year, re­ceive the promised in­crease in salaries.

Last year, 54,000 pub­lic work­ers, in­clud­ing teach­ers, mem­bers of the dis­ci­plined ser­vices, and gov­ern­ment pen­sion­ers ben­e­fit­ted from a 6.5 per cent retroac­tive salary in­crease, plac­ing an ad­di­tion­al GUY$7.5 bil­lion (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004 cents)in dis­pos­able in­come.

Mem­bers of the Dis­ci­plined Ser­vices and civil­ian mem­bers of the Guyana De­fence Force (GDF) al­so re­ceived a one-month tax-free bonus.

Guyana's vice pres­i­dent Bhar­rat Jagdeo said that the in­crease will be paid in the pub­lic ser­vant’s De­cem­ber salary, adding “it will be be­fore the end of the yea”.

He said in ad­di­tion, they will re­ceive the GUY$100,000 cash grant, pre­vi­ous­ly an­nounced by Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali.

Mean­while, the ini­tial dis­tri­b­u­tion process of the GUY$100,000 one-off cash grant is ex­pect­ed to re­sult in about 300,000 Guyanese re­ceiv­ing their cash grants be­fore the end of the year.

“The tech­ni­cal team has said that they can get about 300,000 per­sons reg­is­tered be­fore the end of the year. They told me they can cut about maybe 20,000 checks per day. They have built a sys­tem now to do that,” Jagdeo said.

Pub­lic ser­vants and pen­sion­ers are pri­or­i­ty tar­gets, with the gov­ern­ment aim­ing to dis­trib­ute checks to these per­sons be­fore the end of the year.

“We had al­ready ex­plained that it will take us about five months to com­plete the task. We are try­ing to hur­ry this up so that we could at least get the pub­lic ser­vants and the pen­sion­ers com­plet­ed be­fore the end of the year. We may be able to do that and then a num­ber of oth­er peo­ple who are reg­is­tered,” Jagdeo added.

He said that while some per­sons may re­ceive their cash grants in the new year, he is nonethe­less as­sur­ing that every el­i­gi­ble Guyanese will re­ceive the cash grant, as promised.

On Wednes­day the Na­tion­al As­sem­bly ap­proved a GUY$30.5 bil­lion sup­ple­men­tary pro­vi­sion for the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the cash grant to every cit­i­zen 18 years and above.

The gov­ern­ment has an­nounced sev­er­al mea­sures to gov­ern this ini­tia­tive with the first step be­ing the reg­is­tra­tion ex­er­cis­es where each com­mu­ni­ty will have a reg­is­tra­tion sched­ule, with the sec­ond stage be­ing the ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the reg­is­trants, fol­lowed by the cut­ting of checks.

A dis­tri­b­u­tion sched­ule will then be pub­lished, and these cheques will be dis­bursed in the same lo­ca­tions where reg­is­tra­tion oc­curred.

Since as­sum­ing of­fice, the ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali has im­ple­ment­ed a suite of mea­sures to in­crease dis­pos­able in­come for Guyanese.

Over 200 tax­es and fees by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment were re­moved, in­clud­ing VAT on wa­ter, elec­tric­i­ty, and ba­sic food items.

Oth­er mea­sures in­clude the re­moval of ex­cise tax on fu­el, which saves con­sumers more than $90 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly, the in­crease in the low-in­come mort­gage loan ceil­ing, and the re­moval of tax­es on date for res­i­den­tial and in­di­vid­ual use.

Last year, a $5 bil­lion cost of liv­ing al­lo­ca­tion saw pub­lic ser­vants, teach­ers, and mem­bers of the dis­ci­plined ser­vices, as well as staff of se­mi-au­tonomous agen­cies and pub­lic en­ter­pris­es, re­ceive a $25,000 one-time tax-free cash grant in De­cem­ber 2023, a $1.7 bil­lion in­vest­ment.

“This is how we are pro­mot­ing pros­per­i­ty, own­er­ship, dis­tri­b­u­tion of wealth. This is how the re­sources and rev­enue of this coun­try are be­ing spent every sin­gle day to lift the lives of peo­ple, to ex­pand na­tion­al wealth, coastal wealth, and com­mu­ni­ty wealth. This is what the Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty/Civic Gov­ern­ment is about,” the Guyanese head of state said.

Speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence last month, Jagdeo, who is the gen­er­al sec­re­tary of the Peo­ple’s Pro­gres­sive Par­ty (PPP), said Guyanese re­sid­ing over­seas who have a Guyanese pass­port or ID are en­ti­tled to re­ceive the $100,000 cash grant.

To bet­ter serve the Guyanese, Pres­i­dent Dr. Ir­faan Ali an­nounced that the gov­ern­ment would be mov­ing for­ward with a $100,000 one-time cash grant ini­tia­tive in­stead of the $200,000 one-time cash grant per house­hold. This was be­cause some house­holds may have ex­pe­ri­enced in­ter­nal con­flicts, among oth­er things. (CMC)