The Guyana Pubic Service Union (GPSU) in a strongly worded press release today expressed the view that Finance Minister, Winston Jordan be counseled “to desist from pronouncements that do no more than pollute the prevailing environment, ” as it relates to salary and wages for public servants.
The Union’s comments are in response to what it describes as the minister’s hostility “to the very idea of a living wage for Public Servants.”
“The seeming essence of the Finance Minister’s outburst appears to be with what he says is the “affordability” and “sustainability” of extending the government’s current pay increase offer despite the fact that the Union’s ongoing investigations seriously challenge the validity of the Minister’s claims,” the statement pointed out.
The union called out the Minister for his non-disclosure, thus far of the GPSU’s request for official information that calls into question his “affordability” claim.
The Union’s statement went further to note that “like others before him the Finance Minister appears to take it for granted that the “sustainability” of the Public Service can somehow be sustained, the meagerness of Public Servants’ emoluments and the direness of their material circumstances notwithstanding, His line of reasoning would appear to be that whatever crumbs are thrown in their direction, Public Servants will simply soldier on, regardless.”
The GPSU expressed the view that Public Servants and their families are being taken for granted, placing the nation’s future at risk.
“It is not the Union’s view that the Minister’s posture is in line with the professed position of the political administration expressed in its campaign commitment to meaningfully improving the standard of living of Public Servants.”
It is a harsh irony , the Union said, that Minister Jordan “appears indifferent to the importance of better pay for all categories of Public Servants in circumstances where quite a few contracted employees at the Ministry for which he has Cabinet responsibility enjoy ‘super’ salaries.”
This, incidentally, has been the subject of gossip among some of the “meagerly paid” substantive Public Servants in that very ministry whenever – as it sometimes does – the issue of wages and salaries arise in office discourse, the GPSU claimed.
