It is clear Hamilton Green is highly favoured by this APNU/AFC Administration. The reason for this was explained in one of its inaugural acts last May: President Granger bestowed the Order of Roraima (OR) on Green for his “long and outstanding involvement in the struggle for independence and for his role in providing public service for three generations.”
Subsequent to stepping down as Mayor of Georgetown after 22 years, the 80-year-old Hamilton Green was again rewarded by the government with the Chairmanship of the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CHPA).
Then, in one of the most startling announcements even to strong supporters, the government has placed a special “Hamilton Green Pension Bill 2016” on the Order Paper of the National Assembly to be given its first reading today.
Green who was an MP for 12 years, is already receiving a pension prorated on his salary during those years, as it is for all other MPs. He also receives benefits as a former Mayor of Georgetown, in addition to special guards that were assigned by the City Council. The new pension would be “based on the salary paid to the Prime Minister, as though he actually earned the said salary, taking into consideration his record of service as a legislator.” It also provides for Green to receive all benefits provided for under the Former President (Benefits and Other Facilities) Act 2015.
What this means is that the new pension for Green would be based on the salary of the incumbent Moses Nagamootoo, who earns $20,580,000 annually after the Cabinet gave themselves a 50% salary increase and the PM a $2 million increase in 2015. The PM’s monthly salary is now more than $1.7 million and the pension that he and now Hamilton Green would be receiving would be 7/8 of that or another $1.5 million monthly.
In addition to this sum he would be serviced with chauffeurs, maids, cooks, etc, and two cars plus two first class tickets to any destination in the world. It is very clear that “somebody up there likes” Green.
Not surprisingly Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo reacted with great indignation and called the proposal “duplicitous” in a climate when Public Servants are being told they cannot get their promised “significant raise” because of the “strained circumstances” into which the economy is plunging.
He was joined by the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA), which issued a particularly strong denunciation of the Bill it dubbed “obnoxious”.
Seemingly providing a prelude to an answer to the Opposition Leader’s demand for an explication of exactly what Green had done for the special treatment, the GHRA noted: “”The Prime Minister Hamilton Green Pension Bill 2016 on the Order Paper is utterly shocking. His entire political career reflects the attributes that have kept Guyana ethnically polarized and, for this reason, securely anchored at the bottom of all Caribbean indicators of social and economic progress in the modern era. As a young and ruthless politician in the early 1960s his name figured prominently in the violence from which this society has still to recover.”
Even the reasons offered for award of the OR could not explicitly refer to Green’s 22-year stint as Mayor of Georgetown since this “public service” only allowed the capital of the country to sink into slime and decrepitude.
During his PNC years as Minister in several capacities, he was most famous for overseeing a Ministry of Health that permitted rats to gnaw at the toes of children in the GHPC. His Prime Ministership was only made possible when a prescient Forbes Burnham demoted him from being First Vice President and allowed Desmond Hoyle to become president at his death. Hoyte then expelled Green from the PNC.
The award, and now the pension, could only refer to Green’s contribution during the riotous 1960s in the role to which the GHRA alluded.
This pension must not be awarded.
