Govt “preoccupied” with budget preparations, will engage GPSU soon – Trotman

Government may find it difficult to fulfil the Guyana Public Service Union’s (GPSU) request for a return to the bargaining table by monthend since it is currently preoccupied with p

reparations for the presentation of Budget 2017.
Having already rejected the Government’s proposed ‘interim’ payout of salary increases for 2016 at a differentiated rate of one to 10 per cent, the GPSU called on the Administration to resume wage negotiations by month-end.
But Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman, who chaired post-cabinet press briefing on Thursday, indicated that government has no interest in disregarding the union but it may be challenging to engage in talks before the end of the month:
“We have no hesitation in speaking to the GPSU or any other union in that matter…if at all, I know that the Ministry of Finance officials have been consumed over the last few weeks with readying Budget for a nearly presentation at the end of this month which is going to be history-setting in a sense. If at all, what some may see as sloth may actually be explainable as preoccupation of other matters of State.”
Nonetheless, he assured the union that government will engage them soon:
“Government’s predisposition is always going to be for talking. We believe that talking is the way forward to resolving differences and conflicts.”
Budget 2017 will be presented in the National Assembly by Finance Minister Winston Jordan on November 28.
Government and the GPSU reached a deadlock in wage negotiations this year, prompting the administration to offer an interim payout to public servants.
The GPSU had expected an early return to the bargaining table and expressed disappointment and concern over government’s lack of haste in the matter.
The union said the posture of the government sends a message that might even raise questions about the extent to which any serious value is placed on the contribution that public servants make to Guyana.
The GPSU is adamant that it is in Government’s interest and the interest of all Guyanese that the issue of emoluments of the nation’s public servants be treated with the level of urgency and importance which it deserves.
“There is, even at this time, manifest evidence that demands are being made of Public Servants and the Public Service that are inconsistent with the rewards that they are being offered,” the GPSU stated.
The union said it had been its expectation that negotiations between itself and the Government would have, by now, realised much more than an ‘unreasonable and unacceptable’ wages and salaries offer and that, “we would have at least arrived at a point where the talks would have resulted in some measure of seasonal satisfaction… That, regrettably, has not been the case.”