Khara Per­sad

Pres­i­dent of the Sen­ate Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith says par­lia­men­tar­i­ans de­serve a pay hike.Ad­dress­ing the is­sue of re­cent rec­om­men­da­tions yes­ter­day for in­creas­es made by the Salary Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC), Hamel-Smith said he agreed with them, say­ing the cur­rent salaries earned by par­lia­men­tar­i­ans was not a "liv­ing wage.""We re­al­ly treat our par­lia­men­tar­i­ans as do­ing part-time ser­vice," Hamel-Smith said at a lun­cheon host­ed by the Port-of-Spain Ro­tary Club at Good­will In­dus­tries, Fitz Black­man Dri­ve, Port-of-Spain.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form at the event, he list­ed some of the par­lia­men­tary roles, in­clud­ing a min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio, ser­vice in the Cab­i­net, par­tic­i­pa­tion in Cab­i­net and Par­lia­men­tary Com­mit­tees, re­view and ap­proval of leg­is­la­tion and du­ties as con­stituen­cy rep­re­sen­ta­tives."I don't know if any of you un­der­stand or ap­pre­ci­ate the amount of time that has to be spent in or­der to sat­is­fy your con­stituents," he told the gath­er­ing.

He said the way the Cab­i­net was struc­tured ef­fec­tive­ly set mem­bers up for fail­ure in one or more of the roles they had to per­form."If you are a min­is­ter and you are in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, you have about sev­en roles to per­form," he added.He said it was easy to change the Con­sti­tu­tion in a fun­da­men­tal way to al­low the Cab­i­net to per­form ef­fec­tive­ly, as all that was re­quired was a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty which would change the way min­is­ters were cho­sen.

"So that we can get at the end of the day ef­fi­cient and ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment, achiev­ing the kind of ser­vice you de­mand and we de­serve in T&T," Hamel-Smith said.The change would al­low mem­bers to have time and en­er­gy to fo­cus on poli­cies which could trans­form the coun­try, he added.

The 98th re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC) was laid in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Fri­day. Rec­om­men­da­tions for pay hikes by as much as 24 per cent were out­lined for most of the coun­try's top of­fice-hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Prime Min­is­ter, Op­po­si­tion Leader and Chief Jus­tice.

The pro­posed in­creas­es would take the Prime Min­is­ter's salary from $48,000 to $59,680 and the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion's from $23,800 to $29,590. The pro­posed 24 per cent in­crease in ba­sic salaries to top pub­lic of­fi­cials is ex­pect­ed to cost the State over $74 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.There has been mixed re­ac­tion to the rec­om­men­da­tions, with some sec­tors of the pub­lic say­ing the in­creas­es were not de­served while oth­ers were in sup­port.

Yes­ter­day, Hamel-Smith said that was due in part to how the pub­lic viewed the work of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans."We don't recog­nise be­ing a par­lia­men­tar­i­an is a full-time job," he said, adding more in­di­vid­u­als who could serve on com­mit­tees were need­ed in Par­lia­ment."So you ei­ther want a pro­fes­sion­al Par­lia­ment or you con­tin­ue to strug­gle in the way we strug­gle, by not hav­ing suf­fi­cient peo­ple and by not pay­ing them what they de­serve," he added.

When asked about cur­rent wages, Hamel-Smith said: "Sure, if you ask me if it suf­fi­cient, I would tell you it's suf­fi­cient, if I have a part-time job."If you want me to work whole time, 100 per cent of my time, ded­i­cat­ed to par­lia­men­tary work, then there is no way that salary could be..." he said, stop­ping short.Hamel-Smith said with all the clash­ing func­tions, com­mit­tees could not per­form be­cause quo­rums were not met.

He added that poor per­for­mance was not the re­sult of un­will­ing­ness to work but be­cause there were mul­ti­ple func­tions which "no one per­son can ever per­form sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly, there­fore you are geared for fail­ure."To ad­dress this, Hamel-Smith sug­gest­ed the use of par­ty lists."The Prime Min­is­ter can be re­quired to choose her min­is­ters from the par­ty lists, from the Sen­ate, and from the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives."

"This means if all min­is­ters were not cho­sen from Par­lia­ment, there would be more room for com­mit­tees to per­form," he said.

Elec­toral sys­tem

Hamel-Smith al­so ques­tioned whether our elec­toral sys­tem was tru­ly de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, say­ing un­der our cur­rent first past the post sys­tem, there could be un­fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion against a size­able mi­nor­i­ty."Since 1981, you find 20 per cent of the elec­torate vot­ed for a po­lit­i­cal par­ty that wins no seat in Par­lia­ment. And you want to say that is democ­ra­cy and it pro­duces prop­er rep­re­sen­ta­tion."

He said al­most a quar­ter of the pop­u­la­tion was un­rep­re­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment and there­fore had no pos­si­bil­i­ty of hav­ing an im­pact on gov­ern­ment poli­cies. He said our cur­rent win­ner-take-all sys­tem hin­dered T&T's de­vel­op­ment.

Pro­posed SRC in­creas­es

Po­si­tion Ex­ist­ing Salary Rec­om­men­da­tion

Ju­di­cia­ry

1 Chief Jus­tice $909,720 $1,193,680

10 Jus­tices of Ap­peal @$762,720 $7,627,200 $1,039,960 $10,399,600

29 Puisne judges @$717,120 $20,796,480 $983,320 $28,516,280

Sub to­tal $29,333,400 $40,109,560

Ex­ec­u­tive

1 Prime Min­is­ter 617,100 $749,480

1 At­tor­ney Gen­er­al $557,550 $673,220

33 Cab­i­net min­is­ters@$526,500 $17,374,500 $636,230 $20,995,590

2 Non-Cab­i­net min­is­ters@$475,200 $950,400 $572,420 $1,144,840

Sub to­tal $19,499,550 $23,563,130

Leg­is­la­ture

1 Sen­ate Pres­i­dent $367,500 $447,270

1 House Speak­er $372,300 $453,030

1 Op­po­si­tion Leader $395,100 $481,110

1 Deputy Speak­er $197,700 $240,000

15 MPs@$191,400 $2,871,000 $232,170 $3,482,550

1 Vice Pres­i­dent $196,500 $237,840

29 Sen­a­tors@$158,700 $4,602,300 $190,860 $5,534,490

Sub to­tal $9,002,400 $10,876,290

TO­TAL $57,835,350 $74,548,980