RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Mem­bers of the pub­lic yes­ter­day ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced there would be no in­crease in the min­i­mum wage for pri­vate sec­tor, while an­nounc­ing one for the pub­lic sec­tor.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment as he de­liv­ered his over five-hour pre­sen­ta­tion, Im­bert an­nounced that on­ly pub­lic sec­tor work­ers will ben­e­fit from a $2 min­i­mum wage in­crease from $20.50 to $22.50.

But short­ly be­fore Im­bert made his an­nounce­ment, San Fer­nan­do ven­dor Shawn De­ok­i­nanand said small en­tre­pre­neurs, in­clud­ing ven­dors, felt un­easy.

“They’re say­ing they not tar­get­ing the small man like nuts ven­dors but wait and see what will hap­pen,” De­ok­i­nanand said.

He added that with T&T en­ter­ing an elec­tion year, he had hoped for mea­sures ad­dress­ing the in­crease in food prices.

“Peo­ple are strug­gling right now. I want­ed to hear some mea­sures to re­duce food prices, and we were hop­ing to see the min­i­mum wage in­creased to $30 an hour,” De­ok­i­nanand said.

Re­trench res­i­dent Zai­da Mo­hammed al­so said the min­i­mum wage should have been in­creased, cit­ing steep food prices.

“We al­so hoped to hear that there would be a more re­li­able wa­ter sup­ply,” she said.

Taxi dri­ver An­dre Granger sup­port­ed the Bud­get ini­tia­tives but said he had hoped to see a re­duc­tion in fu­el prices.

“I like the idea of the road paving but I feel there should have been a fu­el re­duc­tion too,” he said.

Mean­while, Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber of Com­merce pres­i­dent Ki­ran Singh ex­pressed sup­port for the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to in­crease in the min­i­mum wage for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers.

“This is wel­come news for the cat­e­go­ry of work­ers who will ben­e­fit from that in­crease. The cost of liv­ing con­tin­ues to rise, along with the price of gro­ceries and fu­el,” Singh said.

He added, “We sus­pect large con­glom­er­ates in the cor­po­rate sec­tor may fol­low suit with the Gov­ern­ment.”

Singh said he was cer­tain that busi­ness­es in the Small Mi­cro En­ter­pris­es (SME) sec­tor may not be in a po­si­tion to ex­tend the same in­crease to min­i­mum wage work­ers like se­cu­ri­ty guards and clean­ers due to cash flow con­straints.

“We cer­tain­ly sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s de­ci­sion to raise the min­i­mum wage for their work­ers,” Singh said.

In jus­ti­fy­ing the de­ci­sion not to in­crease min­i­mum wage for pri­vate-sec­tor work­ers, Im­bert said, “We recog­nise that any in­crease in the na­tion­al min­i­mum wage has its pros and cons. While it brings com­fort and an im­proved stan­dard of liv­ing for those at the bot­tom of the in­come scale, an ar­bi­trary in­crease can cre­ate hard­ship for small busi­ness­es and mar­gin­al en­ter­pris­es. It can lead to re­trench­ment, clo­sures, or re­duced work hours, thus can­celling out its ben­e­fits.”

He added, “We have, there­fore, de­cid­ed not to make any fur­ther ad­just­ments or in­creas­es to the na­tion­al min­i­mum wage at this time, es­pe­cial­ly since the last in­crease just a year ago was in the or­der of 17 per cent. Small and medi­um en­ter­pris­es are still grap­pling with the chal­lenge of man­ag­ing that in­crease.”

How­ev­er, Im­ber said Gov­ern­ment, as the largest em­ploy­er in the coun­try, is aware of the dif­fi­cul­ties en­dured by those earn­ing the min­i­mum wage.

“Ac­cord­ing­ly, while we do not wish to place ad­di­tion­al stress on the small busi­ness sec­tor at this time, and while we con­tin­ue to re­view the na­tion­al min­i­mum wage for fu­ture in­creas­es, we will in­crease the min­i­mum wage for pub­lic sec­tor em­ploy­ees from $20.50 to $22.50 per hour. This rep­re­sents an in­crease of $2 per hour or 9.8 per cent,” he said.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had pre­vi­ous­ly called on the gov­ern­ment to raise the min­i­mum wage to $25 per hour due to the hard­ship peo­ple were fac­ing from the ris­ing cost of liv­ing.