Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bishu Ra­goonath be­lieves the SRC’s rec­om­men­da­tion to in­crease the salaries of the coun­try’s top pub­lic of­fi­cials can on­ly be viewed as ob­scene and the Gov­ern­ment may face a push­back from the pop­u­la­tion.

Ra­goonath was giv­ing his take on the rec­om­men­da­tions.

“The fact that pub­lic ser­vants were giv­en a four per cent pay hike over six years, it could be seen as ob­scene that the Prime Min­is­ter and they would take a 30 per cent while they call on the pop­u­la­tion at large to hold strain,” he said.

Ra­goonath said the of­fer the Gov­ern­ment put on the ta­ble for pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees “this is hard­ly one that I think would get the vast sup­port of the pop­u­la­tion.”

He said see­ing that Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans would be the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the SRC’s rec­om­men­da­tions “they may seek their in­ter­est. They may put them­selves first in­stead of the coun­try first.”

While Cab­i­net has to ac­cept the rec­om­men­da­tions, Ra­goonath said, it would have to come to Par­lia­ment for a vote which would re­quire a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty.

“The Prime Min­is­ter and the Cab­i­net can eas­i­ly come out to­mor­row morn­ing and say the SRC has done their work but we are not ac­cept­ing it. In like man­ner, you have to give the Gov­ern­ment cred­it that the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion came up with a rec­om­men­da­tion to in­crease the elec­tric­i­ty rates and it has not yet been ac­cept­ed.”

Un­able to say what met­ric the SRC used to ar­rive at the pro­posed in­crease, Ra­goonath said “clear­ly we don’t have that type of in­for­ma­tion so we can not chas­tise them.”

Shar­ing his thoughts, econ­o­mist Ronald Ramkissoon said the rec­om­men­da­tion could have come at a time to woo com­pe­tent pub­lic sec­tor work­ers lead­ing up to the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

With the 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion draw­ing clos­er, Ramkissoon said “If this is what we might see com­ing down the road, it is quite pos­si­ble, we might be able to en­cour­age, per­haps, some more com­pe­tent cit­i­zens to of­fer them­selves up for pub­lic ser­vice,” he sur­mised.

The 98th SRC’s re­port was ap­proved be­fore the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.

“We are a small coun­try ... we want the best and the pub­lic ser­vice is a very crit­i­cal area,” he added.

Ramkissoon said pub­lic sec­tor per­for­mance and com­pen­sa­tion are not some­thing that should be sen­sa­tion­alised.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly some of that is go­ing to hap­pen.”

He said pub­lic sec­tor com­pen­sa­tion must serve to en­cour­age more ca­pa­ble cit­i­zens.

Ramkissoon, how­ev­er, not­ed that any pay in­crease in the pub­lic sec­tor “will be un­pop­u­lar at this time.”