Ali­cia Llanos

Min­is­ter of Labour, Small and Mi­cro En­ter­pris­es Er­rol Mc Leod says the min­i­mum wage will not be in­creased to $20 an hour.

He was speak­ing yes­ter­day at a press brief­ing af­ter the min­istry's con­sul­ta­tion with work­ers' or­gan­i­sa­tions work­shop at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain. He was re­spond­ing to ques­tions about the progress of dis­cus­sions to raise the min­i­mum wage to $20 an hour. Mc Leod used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to clear the air on re­ports that he had said the min­i­mum wage would be raised to $20.

He said: "Some of your col­leagues in the me­dia have been wrong­ful­ly as­crib­ing to me and to my Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship col­leagues that a promise of an in­crease to $20 in min­i­mum wage was made. "I nev­er made that promise and I have nev­er heard my col­leagues make such a promise." Mc Leod said it was the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (Natuc) which pub­licly pro­posed a $20 min­i­mum wage and it was the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun) which pro­posed, a much less talked about, $15 an hour min­i­mum wage.

He added: "None of those num­bers are as­so­ci­at­ed with the con­sid­er­a­tion of the Min­is­ter of Labour." Mc Leod, how­ev­er, con­firmed the min­i­mum wage would be im­proved but he could not say by how much. He said: "In the man­i­festo we com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing the min­i­mum wage as will be found to be ap­pro­pri­ate." Mc Leod said, how­ev­er, work was done by the Min­i­mum Wage Board and the min­istry. He said a pro­pos­al was sent to Cab­i­net more than a month ago.

He said on Mon­day he met with the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Win­ston Dook­er­an to dis­cuss the pro­posed min­i­mum wage in­crease. Mc Leod said: "I much sus­pect that how many days from to­day, on Sep­tem­ber 8 per­haps, we will be clos­er to know­ing ex­act­ly what that ( the min­i­mum wage) will be." He said: "Yes the min­i­mum wage will be im­proved. I could not tell you, how­ev­er, at this point the ex­tent to which it will be im­proved."