There is nev­er an ide­al time to re­lease any re­port from the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC), the in­de­pen­dent body that re­views salaries and oth­er con­di­tions of ser­vice for top pub­lic of­fi­cials.

But the tim­ing couldn’t be worse for the re­lease of the SRC’s 120th re­port late last week when there were protests by port and postal work­ers for high­er wages and bet­ter work­ing con­di­tions.

It sends the wrong mes­sage to a pop­u­la­tion deal­ing with cost of liv­ing chal­lenges. Some pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees are clam­our­ing for in­creas­es in col­lec­tive agree­ments that long past their ex­pi­ra­tion dates, and rec­om­men­da­tions have been made for high­er salaries with back pay for the coun­try’s high­est of­fice hold­ers.

Dam­age con­trol, par­tic­u­lar­ly with a gen­er­al elec­tion like­ly to be called in a mat­ter of months, would re­quire re­jec­tion of the SRC rec­om­men­da­tions but will not com­plete­ly dis­si­pate the neg­a­tiv­i­ty the re­port has stirred up.

In any case, it will still not be ac­cept­ed by the av­er­age T&T cit­i­zen that the SRC is sim­ply car­ry­ing out its con­sti­tu­tion­al man­date to pro­vide “ob­jec­tive and im­par­tial as­sess­ments of salaries and com­pen­sa­tion, re­duc­ing the risk of po­lit­i­cal bias or in­flu­ence.”

They will not un­der­stand that pre­vail­ing po­lit­i­cal and so­cial con­di­tions were not con­sid­ered by the SRC when it rec­om­mend­ed sig­nif­i­cant pay in­creas­es for Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie and Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, among oth­ers.

There won’t be much sym­pa­thy for the fact that the cur­rent salaries of the Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader are based on rec­om­men­da­tions in the SRC’s 98th re­port, laid more than a decade ago on Feb­ru­ary 14, 2014.

There­fore, po­lit­i­cal back­lash was in­evitable, as Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, an ex­pe­ri­enced par­lia­men­tar­i­an, should have un­der­stood when he laid the 120th SRC re­port in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Fri­day.

Af­ter all, he has wit­nessed con­tro­ver­sies with SRC re­ports from both sides of the aisles. He was among vo­cal crit­ics of its 98th re­port, laid dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion when the con­tentious is­sue then was the wide dis­par­i­ty in the salaries rec­om­mend­ed for or­di­nary MPs com­pared to Cab­i­net min­is­ters and Gov­ern­ment MPs. 

Re­cent­ly, he has been the one lay­ing the re­ports in Par­lia­ment, in­clud­ing the 117th re­port ear­li­er this year, when the SRC pro­posed a more than 30 per cent hike in the Prime Min­is­ter’s month­ly salary to $80,000.

Al­though the SRC’s re­cent rec­om­men­da­tions have not been ac­cept­ed and there have been no salary in­creas­es for Prime Min­is­ter Row­ley and oth­er high of­fi­cer hold­ers, the Gov­ern­ment will not be spared back­lash be­cause of its fail­ure to prop­er­ly ad­dress the nu­mer­ous in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions dis­putes in­volv­ing pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

These in­clude the sit­u­a­tion at the Port of Port-of-Spain where work­ers rep­re­sent­ed by the Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers Trade Union (SWW­TU) are in­sist­ing on a 12 per cent in­crease they say was agreed to in 2015 dur­ing the tenure of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion gov­ern­ment. At the same time, postal work­ers are de­mand­ing an 18.6 per cent wage in­crease they claim was promised in a 2011 job eval­u­a­tion and T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) work­ers are al­so protest­ing.

These are all black marks against the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion, made worse by the SRC re­port, that need to be ad­dressed with greater ur­gency.

Ig­nor­ing these is­sues is not an op­tion.