Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Free­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

The Prime Min­is­ter’s pro­posed salary in­crease is “not enough,” says Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke. Duke told Guardian Me­dia the base salary for the PM should start at $100,000.

Duke, in a so­cial me­dia video yes­ter­day af­ter­noon, said the Prime Min­is­ter was worth more than the $87,000 rec­om­mend­ed by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC). The SRC’s rec­om­men­da­tions in­clude rais­ing Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s salary from $59,680 to $87,847 over three years, while Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pay would in­crease from $29,590 to $52,159.

Judges, mag­is­trates, and oth­er high-rank­ing of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing THA of­fi­cials, are al­so set to ben­e­fit.

Duke said, “The Prime Min­is­ter is worth every sin­gle cent. And I’m no fan of Row­ley—I’m no friend of his. As a mat­ter of fact, I’m a bona fide foe—but he’s worth more than $85,000. Our econ­o­my is a good econ­o­my, and he’s worth more than that.”

He then called on Par­lia­ment to adopt the SRC’s rec­om­men­da­tions. “Pay those who have worked and who are part of the SRC. Pay them what was rec­om­mend­ed. Don’t quar­rel over that. Yeah, some­body has to be paid for oth­er per­sons to get paid. And if that’s what they want to do, you take out of that and deal with it af­ter­wards. But let them be paid.”

He called on trade unions not to ar­gue but to use the ap­proval of the in­creas­es to press for bet­ter wages for pub­lic ser­vants on the ba­sis that “If it’s good for Pe­ter, it’s good for Paul.”

He added, “The trade unions must stop the talk and get down to ac­tion. There must be a strat­e­gy … Let them pay them­selves be­cause it’s an in­di­ca­tion that the econ­o­my is do­ing bet­ter. It’s an in­di­ca­tion that peo­ple are pay­ing what they are worth. And so, there­fore, the union must use that same strat­e­gy and say, ‘Pay us what we are worth.’”

Since the pay hike pro­pos­al, there have been crit­i­cisms from sev­er­al quar­ters, with the pub­lic ques­tion­ing the tim­ing and cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion.

But Duke felt once im­ple­ment­ed, work­ers can use it to their ad­van­tage. “We’re talk­ing eq­ui­ty, we’re talk­ing fair­ness, we’re talk­ing jus­tice. It will fur­ther mo­ti­vate work­ers to stand up and fight for what they are worth. But no­body wins when every­body los­es. Who wins?” Duke asked.