Trinci­ty/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is has slammed what she says are “mis­lead­ing claims” that the 120th Re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) was “nev­er brought be­fore Par­lia­ment.”

She was re­spond­ing to po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad, who, in a Guardian Me­dia re­port on Sat­ur­day, claimed the is­sue of the hike in salaries for par­lia­men­tar­i­ans and oth­er high-rank­ing of­fi­cials was hard to over­turn be­cause the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment did not take the mat­ter to Par­lia­ment but han­dled it with­in the then-cab­i­net.

Ram­per­sasd was re­spond­ing to ques­tions on Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s claim that she was told by lawyers she doesn’t have the pre­rog­a­tive to re­vert to pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment salary struc­tures and over­turn the SRC in­creas­es.

Robin­son-Reg­is yes­ter­day sought to “set the record straight,” how­ev­er, call­ing the ac­cu­sa­tions by Ram­per­sad “patent­ly false and in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly mis­lead­ing.”

She said the SRC re­port was laid in Par­lia­ment on No­vem­ber 15, 2024, and was “avail­able for ex­am­i­na­tion and de­bate” by the then-op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress.

She said Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s par­ty had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to lodge a mo­tion of ob­jec­tion if they tru­ly dis­agreed with the rec­om­men­da­tions, but they opt­ed not to take ac­tion.

“In­stead, they launched pub­lic crit­i­cisms against the Prime Min­is­ter and Cab­i­net while hap­pi­ly reap­ing the ben­e­fits of the re­port, ben­e­fits they now pre­tend are be­yond their con­trol to re­verse,” Robin­son-Reg­is stat­ed.

Robin­son-Reg­is said the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is at­tempt­ing to play “loose with the in­tel­li­gence” of the peo­ple of T&T by feign­ing that their hands are tied when they had every op­por­tu­ni­ty to act and “de­lib­er­ate­ly chose not to.”

She added that the claim that noth­ing could be done about the SRC’s rec­om­men­da­tions is an at­tempt to mis­lead the pub­lic and avoid ac­count­abil­i­ty. She ac­cused Ram­per­sad of mis­us­ing cru­cial facts re­gard­ing the is­sue.

“It is there­fore disin­gen­u­ous for Dr Ram­per­sad to now pre­tend that the re­port was nev­er pre­sent­ed to Par­lia­ment or that the Op­po­si­tion was pow­er­less to re­spond. Her com­ments not on­ly dis­tort the truth but al­so in­sult the in­tel­li­gence of the pop­u­la­tion and tar­nish the stan­dards of aca­d­e­m­ic ob­jec­tiv­i­ty that should be ex­pect­ed from a lec­tur­er at The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies,” Robin­son-Reg­is said.

The for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al re­mind­ed the pop­u­la­tion that in 2009, Per­sad-Bisses­sar her­self de­mand­ed that then-prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning and his min­is­ters cut their salaries by half, de­clar­ing that “sac­ri­fices should be made by Gov­ern­ment first.”

“To­day, as Prime Min­is­ter, she claims that she is un­able to re­verse the SRC in­creas­es, con­ve­nient­ly for­get­ting that for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had in­deed cut his and his min­is­ter’s salaries af­ter ad­just­ments were made to the SRC re­port af­ter im­ple­men­ta­tion,” she added.

In No­vem­ber last year, the then-gov­ern­ment ac­cept­ed the rec­om­men­da­tions of the SRC, which paved the way for a pay in­crease for top politi­cians and state of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, Op­po­si­tion Leader, MPs, mem­bers of the Ju­di­cia­ry, and the po­lice com­mis­sion­er, among oth­ers. The PM’s salary in­creased from $59,680 to $87,847 while month­ly salary of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in­creased from $29,590 to $47,500.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar had then la­belled it “shame­less­ness and ar­ro­gant greed” on be­half of the then-PNM gov­ern­ment.