Pres­i­dent Ir­faan Ali on Tues­day an­nounced a 10 per cent retroac­tive salary in­crease for all pub­lic ser­vants and that peo­ple with aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions will al­so ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly as of Jan­u­ary next year.

Ali, speak­ing at a break­fast with of­fi­cers of the Guyana Po­lice Force (GPF), said that the pub­lic ser­vants will al­so re­ceive an eight per cent in­crease in salaries in 2025 and that these new wage pack­ages fol­low talks with the Guyana Pub­lic Ser­vice Union (GP­SU).

“This 10 per cent in­crease in salary, which is retroac­tive from 1st Jan­u­ary 2024, will amount to 35 per cent cu­mu­la­tive salary in­crease over the last four years,” Ali said, adding “fur­ther, we’ve been able to bring to the union that 2025 will al­so see an in­crease in the salary of pub­lic ser­vants of eight per cent”.

Ali said in ad­di­tion the gov­ern­ment will work on var­i­ous salary scale ad­just­ments from next year in a move aimed at guar­an­tee­ing that the work­ers take home more mon­ey month­ly.

The head of state said that qual­i­fi­ca­tion al­lowances will al­so be in­tro­duced from Jan­u­ary 1, 2025, and that in­di­vid­u­als with their qual­i­fi­ca­tion from the As­so­ci­a­tion of Char­tered Cer­ti­fied Ac­coun­tants (AC­CA) will al­so get a month­ly al­lowance of GUY$15,000 (One Guyana dol­lar=US$0.004  cents).

Ali said per­sons with a Mas­ter’s De­gree will get GUY $22,000 month­ly, while those with a doc­tor­al de­gree will re­ceive GUY $32,000 month­ly.

“This is in keep­ing with our com­mit­ment of in­cen­tivis­ing ed­u­ca­tion, in­cen­tivis­ing train­ing and the de­vel­op­ment of our hu­man cap­i­tal,” he said, adding that mem­bers of the dis­ci­plined forces will al­so ben­e­fit from in­creas­es to hous­ing and risk al­lowances.

Ali said el­i­gi­ble cat­e­gories of health work­ers would get a GUY$5,000 an­nu­al in­crease in uni­form al­lowances and GUY$10,000 for pub­lic ser­vants. There would al­so be a month­ly hous­ing al­lowance of GUY$35,000 for pub­lic ser­vants on sec­ond­ment trans­fer to hin­ter­land lo­ca­tions from Jan­u­ary 1, 2025.

In ad­di­tion,  there would be a GUY$8,000 sta­tion al­lowance for pub­lic ser­vants serv­ing in cer­tain riverain and hin­ter­land ar­eas and Ali said there would be a 50 per cent in­crease in risk al­lowance and a 104 per cent in­crease in mo­tor car and trav­el al­lowances.

Ali said the gov­ern­ment would grant 100 du­ty-free con­ces­sions an­nu­al­ly for staff nurs­es and above, with “pri­or­i­ty giv­en to per­sons with the longest years of ser­vice and those who have nev­er ben­e­fit­ted from a du­ty-free con­ces­sion.

“This would en­sure that the cri­te­ria for those who are grant­ed the du­ty-free al­so serve the time which is five years and three years so it is an in­cen­tive for the re­ten­tion of our nurs­es al­so,” he said, adding “from this an­nounce­ment, you can see this gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to every cat­e­go­ry of peo­ple of our coun­try is un­ques­tion­able”.

CMC/gt/ir/2024

GEORGE­TOWN, Guyana, Dec 10, CMC –