Gail Alexan­der

Lead­ers at all lev­els of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s (T&T’s) so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing PNM Min­is­ters, UNC MPs and com­pa­ny CEOS should take vol­un­tary pay cuts and they should do so in the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic times to show they’re shar­ing the pub­lic’s bur­den, says for­mer UNC min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath.

His call was sup­port­ed by the UNC’s De­vant Ma­haraj who has at­tacked UNC MP Dr Roodal Moooni­lal’s re­cent chal­lenge to Gov­ern­ment that he’d give up his tax ex­empt­ed car if PNM MPs gave up theirs.

The call came ahead of to­day’s Bud­get 2021 de­bate when the Op­po­si­tion Leader will re­ply to the Gov­ern­ment’s 2021 fis­cal mea­sures.

Men­tion of pay cuts is ex­pect­ed to be made there.

Un­der the 98th Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s re­port, a Prime Min­is­ter’s salary is $59,680 month­ly plus al­lowances and oth­er perks in­clud­ing ve­hi­cle tax ex­emp­tions.

An Op­po­si­tion Leader’s salary is $29,590 plus al­lowances and oth­er perks al­so in­clud­ing car tax ex­emp­tions.

A Cab­i­net Min­is­ter’s salary is giv­en as $41,030 with perks. A non-Cab­i­net Min­is­ter’s salary is $33,940. An MP’s salary is giv­en as $17,140 with perks al­so in­clud­ing trav­el­ling al­lowances.

Bharath who host­ed a Bud­get analy­sis talk show at UNC’s for­mer Rien­zi head­quar­ters on Wednes­day, said, “I’m cer­tain­ly in favour of pay cuts at MPs/Min­is­ters’ lev­el and if I were an MP or min­is­ter I’d so so. With T&T’s cur­rent fi­nan­cial chal­lenges if they all do this, it will send the right mes­sage to the peo­ple that every­one’s shar­ing the bur­den and un­der­stands the plight of those have less.”

“In fact I’d ad­vo­cate a pay cut for all of T&T’s lead­ers in so­ci­ety in­clud­ing CEOs and oth­ers who run or­gan­i­sa­tions es­pe­cial­ly in places where staff was sent home. If I were run­ning an or­gan­i­sa­tion I’d set that ex­am­ple,” said Bharath who’s a con­sul­tant.

Ma­haraj added, “The con­tin­ued ap­pli­ca­tion dur­ing T&T’s cri­sis of the ve­hi­cle tax ex­emp­tion for all MPs is un­con­scionable. While cit­i­zens strug­gle for eco­nom­ic sur­vival dai­ly as the pan­dem­ic’s im­pact rav­ages the na­tion­al econ­o­my, Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans con­tin­ue with life as usu­al - un­phased.”

“The vul­gar, ob­scene state­ment by MP Mooni­lal that he’ll give up his ve­hi­cle if Gov­ern­ment gives up their ex­emp­tion, on­ly un­der­scores that Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans aren’t pre­pared to make an un­qual­i­fied per­son­al sac­ri­fice as is be­ing asked of cit­i­zen. If the Op­po­si­tion was se­ri­ous­ly com­mit­ted, it would man­date all its MPs to cease ap­ply­ing for the tax ex­emp­tion re­gard­less of Gov­ern­ment’s ac­tion. Un­for­tu­nate­ly dri­ving a new Range Rover, or Pra­do seems more im­por­tant to all Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans.”

Ma­haraj added, “As bud­get de­bate con­tin­ues to­day, Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans will hag­gle over much much more the av­er­age cit­i­zen will suf­fer from the eco­nom­ic im­pact of COVID in a sit­u­a­tion where MPs are dis­con­nect­ed from this via their perks and priv­i­leges.”

“Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans shouldn’t on­ly be giv­ing up their ve­hi­cle tax ex­emp­tion but al­so be con­sid­er­ing a tem­po­rary salary cut dur­ing the COVID cri­sis. It’s easy for MPs to speak of hir­ing freeze, pay cuts, lay­offs, and job loss while they’re re­moved from the harsh­est im­pact of the COVID 19”.

“The Prime Min­is­ter of New Zealand and MPs took a 20 per cent pay cut ear­li­er this year to show sol­i­dar­i­ty with cit­i­zens and show lead­er­ship at the high­est lev­el. Mem­bers of In­dia’s Par­lia­ment have passed a bill which, for one year, will re­duce the salaries of MPs by 30 per cent to meet the ex­i­gen­cies aris­ing out of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. In T&T how­ev­er, Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans cling to perks of of­fice with tena­cious re­solve.”

Op­po­si­tion to speak on pay cuts

Yes­ter­day, sev­er­al PNM Min­is­ters - Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Pen­ny Beck­les, Camille Robin­son- Reg­is, Stu­art Young and oth­ers - didn’t an­swer calls on whether they’d be will­ing to take a pay cut.

UNC MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly said the Op­po­si­tion would speak to the is­sue of pay cuts in due course.

UNC MP Dave Tan­coo added, on pay cuts, “I don’t see the val­ue of giv­ing this crooked gov­ern­ment part of my in­come so they can chan­nel it to their friends, fam­i­lies and fi­nanciers, I’d rather pre­fer to do what I’ve been do­ing which is con­tribut­ing part of my salary to­wards the needy in my con­stituen­cy.”

Oth­er UNC mem­bers didn’t re­ply to calls on whether they’d en­ter­tain a pay cut in­clud­ing Mooni­lal, Sad­dam Ho­sein, David Lee, Kadi­jah Ameen and oth­ers.

For­mer UNC MP Su­ruj Ram­bachan said last term an MP’s salary was al­most a to­tal of $22,000 month­ly which com­prised the base of about $17,140 plus $5,500 for trav­el­ling and perks. He said the take-home was about $16,000.

Ram­bachan said his per­son­al view was, “You can’t ask the pub­lic to make a sac­ri­fice if you’re un­will­ing to do that. If a bur­den has to be shared then it must be across the board. It’s clear peo­ple will be mak­ing sac­ri­fices. We don’t know how many con­tract­ed peo­ple will be job­less af­ter the pub­lic ser­vice hir­ing freeze, the sit­u­a­tion at WASA and TTEC may mean job loss­es and the $300 ex­tra Gov­ern­ment said peo­ple would have from the ex­pan­sion of the tax-ex­empt cat­e­go­ry to $7,000, will be lost to prop­er­ty tax and oth­er in­creas­es.”

But his col­league for­mer MP Fuad Khan dis­agreed on Bharath and Ma­haraj’s calls for pay cuts. He said, “Why should MPs and Min­is­ters take cuts when they work long hours for the coun­try, sit for long hours in Par­lia­ment and take al­most dai­ly abuse from peo­ple on na­tion­al mat­ters. Plus they give of their salaries to con­stituents.”

“MPs and Min­is­ter should ac­tu­al­ly get pay in­creas­es for their work. It’s stu­pid to call for pay cuts for them now- it shows peo­ple don’t un­der­stand what MPs and Min­is­ters do.”