Ali­cia Llanos

Pres­i­dent of the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion Wat­son Duke says he ex­pects to meet with the of­fice of the Chief Per­son­al Of­fi­cer (CPO) this week to dis­cuss wage in­creas­es for pub­lic ser­vants. In a phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Duke said he ex­pect­ed the PSA and CPO to par­tic­i­pate in a round-ta­ble meet­ing to dis­cuss wage in­creas­es for pub­lic of­fi­cers. Duke said the PSA had sub­mit­ted a pro­pos­al for in­creas­es in the base salaries of pub­lic ser­vants and for al­lowances such as home re­pair and va­ca­tion. He said the CPO was yet to re­spond to the PSA's pro­pos­als, but he ex­pect­ed to end ne­go­ti­a­tions with­in the next two to three weeks.

Dis­cussing Wednes­day's bud­get pro­pos­al, Duke said the wel­fare of the Pub­lic Ser­vice was spread through­out the bud­get. He said he had good faith that the Gov­ern­ment would pro­vide a fair bud­get to im­prove the lives and well-be­ing of not just pub­lic of­fi­cers but of all cit­i­zens. In re­la­tion to the de­bate on in­creas­ing the min­i­mum wage, Duke said he had no de­mands, but be­lieved the Gov­ern­ment had set the right tone on the is­sue. He said, how­ev­er, it was time for the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty to be­come in­volved and lay down their pro­pos­als, as well as ex­press their rea­son­ing and con­cerns.

Duke said he un­der­stood that in­creas­ing the min­i­mum wage was a chal­leng­ing is­sue, es­pe­cial­ly with the re­port­ed 14.1 per cent in­fla­tion rate. He said he was sat­is­fied with the $3,000 pen­sion grant and want­ed to see it re­flect­ed to pub­lic ser­vants. When asked about the PSA's hous­ing project on Long Cir­cu­lar Road, St James, Duke said at the mo­ment he did not have any com­ments to make, oth­er than he had vowed to en­sure that all mem­bers of the PSA who had in­vest­ed in the project would re­ceive their homes.