The an­nounce­ment by Ja­maican Prime Min­is­ter An­drew Hol­ness last night that he has de­clined his huge salary in­crease, for now, demon­strates the pow­er of res­olute re­sis­tance to an in­cred­i­bly tone-deaf pol­i­cy.

The re­sponse by Prime Min­is­ter Hol­ness is ap­pro­pri­ate, giv­en the sense of out­rage and dis­gust felt by vo­cal mem­bers of the pub­lic who have been burn­ing up ra­dio call-in pro­grammes and so­cial me­dia plat­forms ex­press­ing their feel­ings.

To take just one ex­am­ple, last Tues­day’s an­nounce­ment by Nigel Clarke, Ja­maica’s Min­is­ter of Fi­nance and the Pub­lic Ser­vice, pro­posed a tripling of the salary of the Ja­maica Prime Min­is­ter from J$9.16 mil­lion be­fore April 2022, to J$28.7 mil­lion in April 2024. In US dol­lar terms, the salary of the Ja­maica PM was about US$60,000 a year up to March 2022 and in April 2024, it was pro­posed to be about US$187,000.

In terms of com­par­isons, the 98th Re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion is­sued in No­vem­ber 2013, states the cur­rent salary of T&T Prime Min­is­ter, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, is $59,680 a month, which is $716,160 (US$106,100) a year. That does not in­clude the du­ty al­lowance of $8,860 or the trans­porta­tion al­lowance of $6,660 a month he re­ceives, as well as oth­er perquisites.

But, as Dr Row­ley told a meet­ing of the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in Ari­ma in May 2022: “For the ben­e­fit of the me­dia who speak to the pub­lic, let me tell you what the facts are: The last time Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment (MPs) and min­is­ters got a pay in­crease was March 2014, from the No­vem­ber 2013 rec­om­men­da­tions of the 98th Re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC).”

So, like T&T teach­ers, MPs and Cab­i­net min­is­ters in this coun­try live on their 2014 salaries.

But while many mem­bers of the T&T Cab­i­net are no doubt feel­ing the pinch of not hav­ing a salary ad­just­ment in the al­most eight years the PNM has been in of­fice, they should feel ground­ed with their broth­ers and sis­ters in the pub­lic ser­vice who have al­so felt the pinch of high in­fla­tion.

It would be quite im­pru­dent for the Gov­ern­ment to seek Ja­maican-style salary in­creas­es at this time, giv­en its in­sis­tence that pub­lic ser­vants re­ceive salary in­creas­es of no more than 4 per cent.

The Ja­maica tem­plate is based on the premise that the salaries of MPs have been bench­marked to those of se­nior pub­lic ser­vants for decades. An ad­just­ment of the com­pen­sa­tion of se­nior pub­lic ser­vants, there­fore, means an ad­just­ment to the salaries of MPs and Cab­i­net mem­bers.

But even if the now-tot­ter­ing Ja­maican tem­plate were adopt­ed in T&T, our lo­cal po­lit­i­cal class would on­ly re­ceive a 4 per cent in­crease...and for the same pe­ri­od ne­go­ti­at­ed by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) with pub­lic sec­tor trade unions.

But it is clear from its 98th re­port that the SRC is not oblig­ed to fol­low the lead of the CPO with re­gard to those pub­lic of­fi­cers un­der its re­mit.

Feb­ru­ary 2012 was the last time T&T’s Pres­i­dent con­veyed ap­proval for the SRC to un­der­take a gen­er­al re­view of salaries and oth­er con­di­tions of ser­vice of hold­ers of of­fice with­in its purview.

While a new SRC look at salaries is ap­pro­pri­ate, it is im­por­tant that that body recog­nise “it is im­per­a­tive that we spread the bur­den of ad­just­ment across the so­ci­ety,” to quote Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert in the 2017 bud­get.