While there is much de­bate about the rec­om­men­da­tions by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) for salary in­creas­es for se­nior State of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, some busi­ness lead­ers be­lieve ac­cept­ing the sug­ges­tions at this time would be high­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble.

Dur­ing last Fri­day’s Par­lia­ment sit­ting Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert laid the SRC’s 113th and 117th re­ports.

In the 113th re­port, the Pres­i­dent, Prime Min­is­ter, and Op­po­si­tion Leader main­tained their month­ly salaries of $64,270, $59,680, and $29,590 re­spec­tive­ly.

In the 117th SRC re­port, their re­spec­tive pro­posed month­ly salaries are $73,920, $80,000 and $47,500.

The Busi­ness Guardian spoke to six sev­er­al cham­ber heads to get their per­spec­tive on the SRC’s pro­pos­als.

The Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce pres­i­dent Bal­dath Ma­haraj said while it un­der­stands the SRC has a role to play and salary in­creas­es were rec­om­mend­ed, it would be a gross in­sult if par­lia­men­tar­i­ans ac­cept­ed the hike .

Ma­haraj said the cost of do­ing busi­ness has shown ex­po­nen­tial in­creas­es there­by re­duc­ing over­all prof­itabil­i­ty for busi­ness own­ers.

As such, the cham­ber’s pres­i­dent out­lined that if this in­crease is ac­cept­ed, it would ap­pear that those in au­thor­i­ty are show­ing dou­ble stan­dards and the mes­sage com­ing from the Gov­ern­ment is that the av­er­age cit­i­zen must tight­en their belt while they take ad­di­tion­al aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures to keep the econ­o­my afloat.

He not­ed that there have been calls by busi­ness­men to ap­ply the same 4 per cent of­fered to pub­lic ser­vants, rather than what is be­ing sug­gest­ed by the SRC.

Ma­haraj said dis­cus­sions sug­gest that if nat­ur­al gas is ob­tained from the Drag­on Field, this would in­crease the Gov­ern­ment’s rev­enues.

But he said in­for­ma­tion reach­ing the cham­ber is that the Drag­on gas would not be enough to take the coun­try to lev­els nec­es­sary to ful­fill the re­quire­ments of down­stream in­dus­tries.  

“How­ev­er, it may be pru­dent to wait un­til we re­alise any rev­enues from Drag­on gas, and af­ter these rev­enues are spent on the econ­o­my’s de­vel­op­ment, they can then con­sid­er an in­crease in their salaries. It may be more jus­ti­fied at that point,” he added.

Ang­ie Jairam, Pres­i­dent of the Fyz­abad Cham­ber of Com­merce al­so in­di­cat­ed the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the SRC pro­pos­als is in­ap­pro­pri­ate at this time.  

Jairam rec­om­mends that the Gov­ern­ment’s fo­cus should be placed on strate­gi­cal­ly de­ploy­ing the coun­try’s pro­tec­tive ser­vices, find­ing the fund­ing to ac­quire the ap­pro­pri­ate equip­ment to strength­en the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tems and giv­ing cit­i­zens a deep sense of safe­ty.  

“In ad­di­tion, more mon­e­tary re­sources must be placed in main­tain­ing our na­tion’s in­fra­struc­ture such as our high­ways, roads, bridges, and our pub­lic util­i­ties, es­pe­cial­ly en­hanc­ing our wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems,” she said.

Jairam fur­ther not­ed that the in­creas­es should be in line with what is giv­en to pub­lic ser­vants and lead­ers, they need to lead by ex­am­ple.  

“The econ­o­my is not at the stage where hefty in­creas­es can be made. Where are the funds com­ing from to fa­cil­i­tate this big in­crease?

“Is prop­er­ty tax pay­ing for this in­crease?” the Fyz­abad Cham­ber pres­i­dent de­tailed.

In­ter­im Chair­man of the Gas­par­il­lo Cham­ber of Com­merce, Samuel George, al­so has sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments.

George is firm­ly of the view that since the work­ing class is be­ing told that the coun­try does not have any buoy­ant lev­el of fi­nan­cial re­sources, hence, the tim­ing is not right for any kind of sub­stan­tial salary in­crease for the gov­ern­ment or the op­po­si­tion.

“The Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion, are charged with man­ag­ing the na­tion’s af­fairs or the peo­ple’s busi­ness. They are all aware as to what is hap­pen­ing with every nook and cran­ny with­in T&T and are aware of the dif­fi­cul­ties and hard­ships that ex­ist.”  

“More­over, ef­forts must be made to ramp up nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion, and bring the Drag­on Field to a favourable con­clu­sion so that the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate can be­gin to op­er­ate at pos­si­ble full ca­pac­i­ty,” he ex­plained.

George con­clud­ed that the Gov­ern­ment’s pri­or­i­ties should be to use its fi­nan­cial re­sources to pro­vide guar­an­tees to the busi­ness sec­tor to in­vest in the pro­duc­tive sec­tors to build more eco­nom­ic ca­pac­i­ty, en­hance em­ploy­ment, and en­sure a fair lev­el of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.  

“Once these ob­jec­tives are seen to be ex­e­cut­ed, then I will have no ob­jec­tion to the SRC pro­pos­als.”  

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion (SBA) Daphne Bartlett, said in a cli­mate such as the one this coun­try is in, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should band their bel­lies as well.

“Busi­ness­es have been reel­ing since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and are find­ing it very dif­fi­cult to sur­vive. The rev­enue base has been se­vere­ly re­duced, ex­pens­es are climb­ing, and con­sumer spend­ing has reached an all-time low.

“More than that, the gov­ern­ment needs to spend its fi­nances on beau­ti­fy­ing the en­vi­ron­ment, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to tourism and build­ing sus­tain­able cities, es­pe­cial­ly San Fer­nan­do,” Bartlett added.

Vice chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­ber (CR­BC) and pres­i­dent of the East­ern Busi­ness and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion, Ri­car­do Mo­hammed was adamant that the Gov­ern­ment and oth­er mem­bers of par­lia­ment are not de­serv­ing of any kind of salary in­crease, es­pe­cial­ly the lev­els be­ing rec­om­mend­ed by the SRC.

Mo­hammed fur­ther stat­ed that the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty has not seen any kind of per­for­mance that has been of any ben­e­fit to the coun­try.

He em­pha­sised that now is not the time to con­sid­er any kind of salary in­crease that ranges from 30 per cent to 35 per cent for the Prime Min­is­ter and Mem­bers of the Cab­i­net and Par­lia­ment.  

“Our politi­cians should lead by ex­am­ple, and un­der­stand that the coun­try is in a dire state. So, to seek to re­ward them­selves with a 30 per cent salary in­crease is un­fair and un­just to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. We must see per­for­mance and qual­i­ty of life im­prove­ment as well as eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty.”  

“There has been no al­le­vi­a­tion of hard­ships for the peo­ple over the past ten years, and hard work and achiev­ing re­sults have been ab­sent on the part of this Gov­ern­ment. Hence, I do not sup­port the SRC rec­om­men­da­tions for the salary in­creas­es,” he lament­ed.

 Giv­ing a dif­fer­ent point of view, Vivek Char­ran, chair­man of the CR­BC, point­ed out that the idea of in­creas­ing the wages and perks of the high of­fi­cial is a good one, but the tim­ing of the in­crease is a mis­cal­cu­la­tion, giv­en the pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, the resched­ul­ing of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the prop­er­ty tax, pos­si­ble elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter rate hikes and a slug­gish econ­o­my.

Char­ran ques­tioned why would a suc­cess­ful per­son in the pri­vate sec­tor wish to leave to seek a po­si­tion in Gov­ern­ment.

The salaries of a di­rec­tor of a con­glom­er­ate, a bank man­ag­er or even up­per man­age­ment of a large cor­po­ra­tion are more than a Gov­ern­ment MP.

“It is not right at the mo­ment, but one of the ma­jor cor­rup­tion is­sues is that per­sons in pub­lic of­fice seek to line their pock­ets. But if wages were at­trac­tive and the perks were as well then per­haps this could change.

“What we need are in­no­v­a­tive and fresh ideas and in­di­vid­u­als who as­pire to gov­ern­ment and bring suc­cess to their po­si­tion in the pri­vate sec­tor. But those in­di­vid­u­als will re­main elu­sive if the wages and perks of a gov­ern­ment life re­main what they are,” Char­ran dis­closed.

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Ed­i­tor’s Note: In an ear­li­er ver­sion of this sto­ry, we in­cor­rect­ly pub­lished a pho­to­graph of Pro­man's Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, in­stead of Ri­car­do Mo­hammed, the vice chair­man of the Con­fed­er­a­tion of Re­gion­al Busi­ness Cham­bers. The er­ror is re­gret­ted.