DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Three econ­o­mists have warned that the Op­po­si­tion’s promise to start pub­lic sec­tor wage ne­go­ti­a­tions at no less than ten per cent might not be fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able.

Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Fe­li­cia Thomas made the pledge on Sat­ur­day night when she spoke on a Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) plat­form in San­gre Grande.

She al­so an­nounced the par­ty’s plan to re­tain all em­ploy­ees at the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), re­ject­ing a Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee’s rec­om­men­da­tion to re­duce staff to tack­le cor­rup­tion, po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age, un­ac­count­abil­i­ty, and mis­man­age­ment.

Weigh­ing in on the is­sue, for­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Mar­i­ano Browne ac­cused the Op­po­si­tion of at­tempt­ing to use the Trea­sury to se­cure votes.

“This would be akin to spend­ing your mon­ey be­fore you had re­ceived it, which is not a very prac­ti­cal or a very sen­si­ble thing to do. What I can say is it’s a po­lit­i­cal promise. It’s an at­tempt to win favour with a share of the elec­torate,” he said.

“I guess the rule is when you’re in your po­si­tion, you catch more flies with hon­ey than you catch with vine­gar. At the end of the day, it is the state that has to pay for it. It is the tax­pay­er that has to pay for it. So, you can on­ly fi­nance those things with ei­ther more tax­es or more bor­row­ing.”

Browne com­pared the promise to re­tain all WASA staff to the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s re­struc­tur­ing plan, which in­cludes re­trench­ment. While he agreed that WASA needs re­form, he said job cuts alone are in­suf­fi­cient.

“Just cut­ting staff does not work. We know that WASA needs a re­haul in all dif­fer­ent kinds of ways and they prob­a­bly would need some re­haul in re­gard to staffing too.

“But more im­por­tant­ly, it re­al­ly needs re­or­gan­i­sa­tion and re­or­gan­i­sa­tion on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el, which means in terms of process flow and process flow de­ter­mines how many peo­ple you’ll get or many peo­ple who have to be em­ployed,” Browne said.

Dr In­dera Sage­wan won­dered why the pledge to start ne­go­ti­a­tions at ten per cent came from the PSA’s new pres­i­dent rather than the UNC’s po­lit­i­cal leader.

While she ac­knowl­edged the need for wage ne­go­ti­a­tions to con­sid­er in­fla­tion, she agreed that the promise might be un­re­al­is­tic and pre­ma­ture.

“Clear­ly there is the need for salary and wage in­creas­es that are more com­men­su­rate with what is hap­pen­ing with in­fla­tion and what is hap­pen­ing with oth­er de­mands that are be­ing placed on peo­ple’s pock­ets. I wouldn’t call a fig­ure out to ten per cent. I think there’s a lot of work that needs to be done be­fore one can de­ter­mine that, in ad­di­tion to which it does come down to the is­sue of af­ford­abil­i­ty.”

Dr Mar­lene Attzs al­so warned that while po­lit­i­cal­ly ap­peal­ing, the pro­pos­al is risky giv­en T&T’s fi­nan­cial con­straints, par­tic­u­lar­ly, de­clin­ing en­er­gy rev­enues.

She warned that the UNC’s plan to re­move key tax­es could fur­ther strain gov­ern­ment fi­nances, mak­ing the salary in­crease un­sus­tain­able.

“The coun­try faces sig­nif­i­cant rev­enue short­falls from the en­er­gy sec­tor, with Gov­ern­ment pro­jec­tions show­ing sub­stan­tial de­clines in oil and gas in­come.

“More­over, the UNC has sig­nalled its in­tent to elim­i­nate prop­er­ty tax­es and oth­er key rev­enue sources, po­ten­tial­ly ex­ac­er­bat­ing ex­ist­ing bud­get deficits. While ad­dress­ing work­ers’ wel­fare, in­clud­ing the ris­ing cost of liv­ing, is un­de­ni­ably crit­i­cal, any salary in­crease must be re­spon­si­bly aligned with eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties,” she said.

Attzs stressed the im­por­tance of bal­anc­ing work­er wel­fare with fis­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, em­pha­sis­ing the need for trans­par­ent di­a­logue and care­ful eco­nom­ic plan­ning to man­age work­ers’ and the broad­er pop­u­la­tion’s ex­pec­ta­tions.