GPSU takes aim at Private Sector’s annual $40B ‘perks’

…says more than enough to pay public servants a liveable wage

The Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) has taken umbrage over recent statements emanating from representatives of the local Private Sector, saying that the more than $40 billion it is handed each year in tax waivers and other concessio

ns can be used to pay public servants a liveable wage.
The public servants’ bargaining body was at the time speaking specifically to Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) President Vishnu Doerga’s recent statement regarding Government’s ability to afford to make a higher pay increase to public servants.
The Union has since questioned whether the more than $40 billion in concessions given to the Private Sector annually has in any way motivated Doerga’s seemingly ill-advised statement.
GPSU, in a strongly worded missive in response to Doerga’s affordability argument, said that members of the Public Sector were currently being held prisoners “of meagre wages and salaries”, and they continued “to be victims of a mundane and miserable existence”.
The bargaining body, which recently rejected the 1 to 10 per cent final salary increase proposal made by Government, said Doerga, “in all of his argument as with those of Ministers (Winston) Jordan and (Dominic) Gaskin, no consideration is given to the issue of a living wage, not a level of earnings that support the kind of lavish lifestyle enjoyed by many members of the business class, but earnings that afford a decent living, which properly defined, can be taken to mean enough to afford themselves and their families a reasonable and comfortable level of existence.”
Taking aim at the concessions afforded to the Private Sector annually, the GPSU said, “If there is some validity in the affordability argument to which both Mr Doerga and the mentioned Ministers cling, the question that they must answer (if they dare) has to do with whether the concept of affordability does not apply in equal measure to the vulnerability of an undermotivated Public Service that continues to keep going by sheer force of will.”
The GPSU said Doerga must also relate affordability to the more than $40 billion in duty-free concessions and remission of taxes which the Government gives to the Private Sector each year.
This, the Union contends, incidentally, “is more than what is required to pay Government employees in and out of uniform, ie, Army, Police, teachers, public servants wages and salaries, etc.”
The GPSU used the occasion to also point out that there was, as well, the issue of Private Sector operatives who do not pay their correct taxes as was mentioned by the Finance Minister.
It has since recommended to Doerga and “those of his private colleagues who share his view a course of action that supports a better paid, better incentivised Public Service… This is in the interest of the Public Sector, the Private Sector and the country as a whole.”
Despite the repeated objections which have since led to a call for conciliation, Government will this month begin to make the 1 to 10 per cent pay increases.
This will mean that public servants will, on their October pay cheques, be receiving their increases for the month, in addition to the amount accumulated retroactive to January 2016.
Minister Jordan made the disclosure recently as he engaged the media corps, and insisted that it was all Government could sustainably afford at the time.
At the time of the announcement of the final offer, Government had sought to emphasise that the proposal for wages and salary increases for public servants had taken into consideration the current socio-economic environment and the difficulty in agreeing to increases that would entail having to raise additional revenue and the unsustainability of any further addition to its offer with regard to the current and future budgets.