As a recently retired public servant I take great offence to Anthony Wilson's column (Sunday Guardian March 15) headlined, "Can T&T afford 14 per cent for public servants?" The following are my reasons:
1. When the PSA settled for something like a five per cent increase, at the previous round of negotiations, when others got nine per cent (correct me if my memory fails me, please), I do not recall Mr Wilson going to bat for us.
2. Teachers, TTUTA, settled for a 14 per cent increase late last year. I do not recall Mr Wilson devoting a column as to where the money would come from to honour that agreement. I do not recall him saying–to quote his column–"For the CPO to not offer other workers in the public sector 14 per cent would be discriminatory and "oppressive, unfairly prejudicial or unfairly disregarding their interests or their representatives interests."
3. If the most recent agreement by the teachers' union, TTUTA, did not set the benchmark for salary negotiations for other public sector workers, why attach benchmarking to the agreement for public servants, which came later?
4. I have seen daily-rated workers' wages grow (with successive agreements) to the extent that they have now superseded that of many of the monthly-paid public servants in the lower ranges.
Mr Wilson, please do your homework. Some monthly-paid workers can no longer supervise daily-rated workers. Why? Because the wages of the daily-rated workers which they used to supervise, now exceed that of their former supervisors.
5. It used to be that daily-rated workers sought to convert to monthly-rated, Mr Wilson. Now, daily-rated workers see no benefit in becoming monthly-rated. Their incomes would drop drastically.
6. Furthermore, the performance management exercise intended to re-engineer the public sector has only reached some sections of the public service. This has resulted in the salaries of teachers, among others, mirroring that which obtains in the private sector for work of a similar nature. That exercise is yet to be applied to the public service, Mr Wilson.
7.Public servants salaries are always under the gun. But let us be fair, what are the comparable wages paid to people performing similar duties at the statutory authorities (WASA, TTEC) and even Unit Trust, Central Bank, NFM, TSTT, NGC and Petrotrin? Why should the salary of a public servant–with some 30 years' service– be equivalent to that of a maid or hospitality attendant at TSTT or WASA? Something has to be wrong with that kind of logic. No wonder public servants are a demotivated lot! Dr Morgan Job has repeatedly said that public servants ought not to be receiving the salaries they do, but he, too, should research the kinds of salaries paid elsewhere and compare them to that paid to public servants. If public servants salaries are to be reduced, what about the maids and other like situations outlined above?
8. The signing of an agreement by the PSA is always portrayed as the harbinger of inflation. In fact, it is always a signal to the business community, the taxi drivers, insurance companies, the professions (doctors, lawyers, private institutions etc) to increase their fees. True or false?
A lot of opinion leaders pronounce on matters without thorough research. I, for one, am fed up of it. Stop maligning and demeaning public servants! Public servants are not a threat to our net official foreign reserves!
Y Davidson
Centeno