On the ca­reers por­tal page of web­site of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence, it is dis­closed that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 35,000 peo­ple are em­ployed in T&T’s civ­il ser­vice in per­ma­nent and tem­po­rary roles across min­istries and de­part­ments. That web­site al­so dis­clos­es that ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21,000 peo­ple work with­in the 14 re­gion­al and mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions. That is 56,000 peo­ple em­ployed in the civ­il ser­vice and in lo­cal gov­ern­ment.

If one adds the pro­tec­tive ser­vices—such as the De­fence Force, po­lice, fire and pris­ons ser­vices—an­oth­er 17,200 em­ploy­ees are paid by the Gov­ern­ment, again ac­cord­ing to the web­site of the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence.

By my es­ti­mate, there­fore, a to­tal of 73,200 peo­ple re­ceive month­ly salaries from the Gov­ern­ment, ex­clud­ing the URP (Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme) and the Cepep (Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme), which have been a fea­ture of em­ploy­ment in this coun­try. Both of these pro­grammes have been sus­pend­ed and may nev­er re­turn..

Dur­ing her con­tro­ver­sial speech at the Mon­day Night Re­port on Au­gust 11, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the fol­low­ing:

“My friends, I want to tell you jobs are com­ing your way...Let me tell you what has been hap­pen­ing in the pub­lic sec­tor. Every min­is­ter will come to you and tell you in their min­istry, the num­ber of va­can­cies in the pub­lic ser­vice. The PNM (Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment, the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion) re­fused to fill those va­can­cies. Why? Be­cause they want­ed to hand­pick po­lit­i­cal friends and put them on con­tract for big, big mon­ey. They did not fill the va­can­cies. There are thou­sands of va­can­cies in the pub­lic sec­tor. They left those jobs un­filled. Why did they do that? Be­cause they want­ed to give you make-work pro­grammes, which is an­oth­er kind of slav­ery...

“We have a man­date to fill all the va­can­cies across the pub­lic ser­vice, to cre­ate more mean­ing­ful jobs, to al­low the av­er­age cit­i­zen to earn more, to ad­vance your ed­u­ca­tion, your skills and ca­reers, so you don’t get stuck in a Cepep syn­drome for 10 years, that puts you in an op­pressed po­si­tion that you have to de­pend on some po­lit­i­cal pap­py to give you a hand down...

“I have in­struct­ed my min­is­ters to fill all va­can­cies across all min­istries. Fill them prop­er­ly and trans­par­ent­ly. The Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, the Teach­ing Ser­vice Com­mis­sion. Let’s fill the va­can­cies across the ser­vice and cre­ate sus­tain­able jobs for the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“I am told there are about 20,000 va­can­cies...”

First of all, in the­o­ry, I am very much in favour of the Gov­ern­ment fill­ing all the va­can­cies across all min­istries in this coun­try. The more peo­ple em­ployed means greater ag­gre­gate spend­ing in the econ­o­my, which is like­ly to re­sult in more tax rev­enue for the Gov­ern­ment, but al­so greater de­mand for for­eign ex­change and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of high­er in­fla­tion.

The ob­vi­ous ques­tions that arise from the Prime Min­is­ter’s in­struc­tions to her min­is­ters to fill all the va­can­cies across all of T&T’s min­istries are:

1) What would it cost T&T tax­pay­ers to fill all of the va­can­cies across all of the min­istries, which the Prime Min­is­ter was told could amount to 20,000 jobs?

2) Where is the mon­ey go­ing to come from to fill all of the va­can­cies in all of the min­istries?

3) Did the PNM refuse to fill va­can­cies “be­cause they want­ed to hand­pick po­lit­i­cal friends and put them on con­tract for big, big mon­ey?’

Cost of fill­ing va­can­cies

Ac­cord­ing to the bud­get doc­u­ment, Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture for the Fi­nan­cial Year 2025, which is from Oc­to­ber 1, 2024 to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2025, the Gov­ern­ment’s to­tal spend­ing on per­son­nel costs in the 2025 fi­nan­cial year is ex­pect­ed to be $9.37 bil­lion. That does not in­clude the sub­ven­tion for pub­lic ser­vice pen­sion and gra­tu­ities, which is pro­ject­ed to to­tal $3.19 bil­lion for the cur­rent fi­nan­cial year.

The 2024 es­ti­mate of ex­pen­di­ture on per­son­nel for the 2024 fi­nan­cial year was $10.42 bil­lion. Pen­sions and gra­tu­ities amount­ed to $2.67 bil­lion.

Ac­cord­ing to the Re­view of the Econ­o­my 2024, “Wages and salaries is ex­pect­ed to have in­creased by $1,049.6 mil­lion (11.1 per cent) to $10,469.7 mil­lion, in fis­cal 2024. This in­crease in spend­ing in com­par­i­son to fis­cal 2023 is a re­sult of the pay­ment of ar­rears of salaries, al­lowances and over­time for the Po­lice, Fire and Prison Of­fi­cers as well as the pay­ment of ar­rears of salaries to teach­ers, con­se­quent to the set­tle­ment of col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments for the 2014 to 2016 and 2017 to 2019 pe­ri­ods.”

If the Gov­ern­ment is able to suc­cess­ful­ly fill all of the 20,000 va­can­cies across all of the min­istries, my back-of-the-en­ve­lope cal­cu­la­tion is that that is like­ly to in­crease the re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture on wages and salaries by about 27 per cent. At the high­er end, that could add $2.7 bil­lion to the wages and salaries cost of the pub­lic ser­vice, as de­fined above, tak­ing the al­lo­ca­tion for that ex­pen­di­ture close to $13 bil­lion.

But, of course, that is not all: Dur­ing the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign, the po­lit­i­cal par­ty that now forms the Gov­ern­ment promised to start pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at a 10 per cent in­crease. One as­sumes, there­fore, that those ap­point­ed or se­lect­ed to fill the va­can­cies across all of T&T’s min­istries would ben­e­fit from the high­er salaries, al­lowances and ben­e­fits that pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion, Fe­l­isha Thomas ex­pects will be an­nounced in the 2026 bud­get.

So, if the Gov­ern­ment seeks to ful­fill its promise to in­crease pub­lic sec­tor salaries by at least 10 per cent, that is like­ly to lead to high­er salaries and back­pay of be­tween $8 and $10 bil­lion for ex­ist­ing pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees in the 2026 fi­nan­cial year, plus an­oth­er $2.7 bil­lion for the new em­ploy­ees, spread out over a pe­ri­od of two years per­haps..

There is one ad­di­tion­al cost that has to be es­ti­mat­ed, and that is the pen­sions and gra­tu­ities that these new em­ploy­ees will re­ceive when it is their time to re­tire from the pub­lic ser­vice. No pru­dent em­ploy­er hires any­one with­out cal­cu­lat­ing what their pen­sion and gra­tu­ity cost is go­ing to be in the fu­ture. In oth­er words, the fu­ture pen­sion li­a­bil­i­ty of an em­ploy­ee is al­ways part of the cal­cu­la­tion in their hir­ing. This is es­pe­cial­ly true for pub­lic ser­vice em­ploy­ees, who ben­e­fit from un­fund­ed pen­sion arrange­ments, mean­ing the em­ploy­ees of Gov­ern­ment do not con­tribute to their own pen­sions.

Where is the mon­ey com­ing from?

I can pre­dict, with a high de­gree of cer­tain­ty, that if Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar or Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Bar­ry Padarath are asked this ques­tion, the an­swer will be that cut­ting cor­rup­tion and end­ing phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, rental, lease, pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er agree­ments with the so-called one per­centers would be enough to fund the hir­ing of 20,000 peo­ple to fill the va­can­cies in all the min­istries in this coun­try.

In the re­al world, most of the mon­ey to fund the fill­ing of va­can­cies will have to be bor­rowed or ac­cessed from draw­ing down on the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund. If I am right, fill­ing the va­can­cies in the pub­lic ser­vice will deep­en T&T’s deficits, at a time when the coun­try should be look­ing to re­duce the gap be­tween rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture.

Cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al ag­gre­gate de­mand in the econ­o­my would have con­se­quences on: T&T's deficit and there­fore its debt; de­mand for for­eign ex­change and the rate of in­fla­tion.

Why did the PNM not fill the va­can­cies?

For­mer min­is­ter of fi­nance, Colm Im­bert, is best placed to an­swer that ques­tion, but one of the rea­sons could be that he did not think the coun­try could af­ford to fill all the va­can­cies in the pub­lic ser­vice.