Tony Fras­er

Should com­pen­sa­tion pack­ages to the ma­jor of­fice-hold­ers in the three arms of the State–the Ju­di­cia­ry, the Par­lia­ment and Ex­ec­u­tive–be strict­ly linked to the qual­i­ty and ef­fi­cien­cy of the ser­vice they ren­der to the pub­lic?

In­deed, it may al­so be that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the con­tin­u­a­tion in of­fice at the high­est lev­el of the State must al­so de­pend on pub­lic ac­cep­tance that the of­fice-hold­ers are earn­ing their salaries be­fore they can "ask for more." It may al­so be that of­fice hold­ers should be re­quired to say why there should not be an ef­fec­tive re­duc­tion in their salaries for non-per­for­mance.

Unionised work­ers and their lead­ers have to pe­ti­tion and jus­ti­fy claims for salary in­creas­es as they si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly en­gage in rig­or­ous "strug­gle" on the streets for salary in­creas­es and oth­er ben­e­fits and are of­ten lec­tured on un­com­pet­i­tive pro­duc­tiv­i­ty lev­els and the in­abil­i­ty of the State to meet pay in­creas­es.All this is stat­ed while work­ers' salaries have been ef­fec­tive­ly re­duced by six to eight years of wait­ing, all the while that in­fla­tion has tak­en a large chunk out of an even­tu­al set­tle­ment.

So why should the salaries of ma­jor of­fice hold­ers, es­pe­cial­ly those in the Par­lia­ment and the Ex­ec­u­tive, re­main un­af­fect­ed, more so as over the last 25 years the elec­torate has con­sis­tent­ly vot­ed out ad­min­is­tra­tions be­cause of the poor qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance of­fered?In the in­stance of the Ju­di­cia­ry, Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie has ac­cept­ed that judges, in­clud­ing those in the Ap­peal Court, have not per­formed as ef­fi­cient­ly as is re­quired in de­liv­er­ing judg­ments on time.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers