“It’s not a min­i­mum wage per se.”

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said the de­ci­sion to in­crease the min­i­mum wage for gov­ern­ment work­ers by $2 was not meant to pres­sure the pri­vate sec­tor to fol­low suit.

“I said we didn’t want to im­pose an­oth­er in­crease of the min­i­mum wage in just 12 months, par­tic­u­lar­ly for small busi­ness­es. Be­cause the point I made was, yes, of course, if you’re earn­ing min­i­mum wage, you are go­ing to be hap­py for any in­crease that you get be­cause you’re re­al­ly at the min­i­mum.

“But then small busi­ness­es in par­tic­u­lar, they can’t cope with these huge in­creas­es; we in­creased the min­i­mum wage by 17 per cent last year. So, we thought, look, let’s not put the pres­sure in the pri­vate sec­tor, but for the work­ers that we are re­spon­si­ble for, we will in­crease their wages,” said the Fi­nance Min­is­ter at the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion’s Post Bud­get Dis­cus­sion at the Hy­att Re­gency in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. He ex­plained that these in­creas­es would be paid for by the State.

“These are state en­ti­ties, so we sim­ply want to ad­vise the boards of these com­pa­nies that this is what we would like them to pay. In the case of CEPEP, for ex­am­ple, we have to pro­vide the sub­ven­tion, be­cause CEPEP is not a rev­enue gen­er­a­tor, nei­ther URP nor MTS. So, what is go­ing to hap­pen is that MTS will bill us for the ad­di­tion­al cost. But it is a sig­nal of what we would like you to do,” said Im­bert.

–Pe­ter Christo­pher