Richard Lord

Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Wat­son Duke yes­ter­day ac­cept­ed the five per cent salary hike pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment's Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO), Stephanie Lewis."We are set­tling at five per cent to­day," Duke said fol­low­ing yes­ter­day's sign­ing of a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) be­tween the PSA and Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Stephanie Lewis at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair.The sign­ing was wit­nessed by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an, Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod and ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers of the PSA."To­day the PSA has come to a pause in a long and te­dious jour­ney," Duke told re­porters at a ten-minute news brief­ing at the same venue.

The MOU pro­vides for:

• Hous­es for all PSA mem­bers (in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion);

• Full in­sur­ance cov­er­age for the rel­a­tives of pub­lic ser­vants (Gov­ern­ment to con­tribute more than the work­ers);

• Death ben­e­fits to in­crease from $20,000 (to a yet to be de­ter­mined amount); and,

• Job eval­u­a­tions to start with­in the next three months;

Duke said: "Five per cent is on­ly the form of what we are set­tling for to­day.

"The sub­stance re­al­ly amounts to some 55 per cent when one con­sid­ers the mil­lion-dol­lar cov­er­age on the health plan for every sin­gle fam­i­ly, for every sin­gle em­ploy­ee. You can't equate that to per­cent­age." He said that plan moved from $500 to $1 mil­lion cov­er­age.Duke said a val­ue could not be put on the pro­vi­sion of homes for all pub­lic ser­vants."You re­al­ly can't put five per cent on that," he stressed.He said a five per cent could not be placed on those mea­sures,"It's like a Mas­ter­Card ad­ver­tise­ment. It's price­less," he added.He said no pub­lic ser­vant could be up­set with the agree­ment reached.

He said: "There is noth­ing to be sad about."These are things a per­son will sleep on tonight. They will re­joice on to­mor­row. They will re­joice Sun­day and they will come next week to this PSA to thank us."Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the agree­ment was "his­toric."She was praised high­ly the ac­cep­tance of the death ben­e­fit, the hous­ing pro­vi­sion and oth­er mea­sures pro­posed by the Gov­ern­ment."These are mat­ters that re­late to the qual­i­ty of life of the pub­lic ser­vants," she added.Per­sad-Bisses­sar said while the five per cent was main­tained and ac­cept­ed, the oth­er mea­sures would go a long way to im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life of all pub­lic ser­vants.

"It paves the way for a more peace­ful phase of in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions in the coun­try," she said.Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who had re­turned to T&T hours ear­li­er, said it was im­por­tant to have a sta­ble eco­nom­ic cli­mate in T&T to at­tract for­eign in­vest­ments.In an in­ter­view at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port short­ly af­ter her ar­rival, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "I do not in­tend to de­vi­ate from five per cent."She was con­fi­dent oth­er mea­sures would be put to work­ers to re­solve their re­spec­tive dis­putes.When asked to com­ment on plans by sev­er­al trade unions to stage a se­ries of shut­downs across the coun­try to protest the Gov­ern­ment's five per cent salary in­crease of­fer she said she was con­fi­dent that once the PSA mat­ter was re­solved the oth­ers al­so would be re­solved.The PSA mat­ter was re­ferred to a Spe­cial Tri­bunal last month af­ter ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CPO broke down. The PSA was de­mand­ing an in­crease of 34 per cent.