SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Pres­i­dent of the San Fer­nan­do Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Daphne Bartlette sees Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s move to in­crease the min­i­mum wage of 194,000 em­ploy­ees from $15 to $17.50 an hour as a mas­ter­stroke by the Gov­ern­ment to cap­ture votes in the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

In de­liv­er­ing his 2019/2020 fis­cal pack­age on Mon­day, Im­bert an­nounced the $2.50 an hour pay hike be­gin­ning from De­cem­ber 1 for low-in­come earn­ers.

The new mea­sure will see the dai­ly salary of a min­i­mum wage earn­er jump­ing from $120 to $140.

In wel­com­ing the high­er pay pack­et for these work­ers, Bartlette said: “We have to give him (Im­bert) a tick be­cause he was very wise in in­creas­ing the min­i­mum wage in the be­gin­ning of De­cem­ber when lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion is like­ly to be held.”

Bartlette said the move was a mas­ter­stroke by Im­bert to en­tice work­ers to vote for the Gov­ern­ment at the ex­pense of the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty.

“It’s the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty who have to make that pay­ment for him. He knows what he did. It is a po­lit­i­cal ploy be­cause why didn’t you do it last year? Why you didn’t do it when they closed down Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery? It was a mas­ter­stroke by the Gov­ern­ment and he (Im­bert) grinned his teeth.”

On the flip side, Bartlette said bar­bers, hair­dressers, nail tech­ni­cians and own­ers of small su­per­mar­kets are the one like­ly to will feel the pinch of such an ini­ti­at­tive, as they would not be able to af­ford the pay hike since busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty has been gen­er­al­ly slow due to the clo­sure of Petrotrin’s re­fin­ery last year.

“Now they (mi­cro busi­ness­es) might have to lay off work­ers. On one hand, it is a plus and on the oth­er, it is a neg­a­tive.”

Pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion Gre­go­ry Aboud said no one should quar­rel with any­one who tries to as­sist those with less­er means.

“In the case of the $17.50 an hour, the ma­jor­i­ty of busi­ness­es have been pay­ing be­yond that rate to at­tract good help.”

Aboud said where the in­crease would be of great as­sis­tance “is in en­try-lev­el jobs which would as­sist in boost­ing fam­i­ly in­come where more than one per­son is con­tribut­ing to the ex­pense of the house­hold.”

Pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce Vish­nu Char­ran said it was no hid­den se­cret that many busi­ness­es have been pay­ing up­ward of $17.50 an hour.

“For those who pay the $15 an hour they would now see an in­crease in their over­all wage bill. I be­lieve it is go­ing to af­fect them in some way be­cause the econ­o­my is still de­pressed. There has not been an in­crease in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in the coun­try es­pe­cial­ly in the re­tail sec­tor.”

Char­ran said small busi­ness own­ers may be af­fect­ed some­what with the in­crease”de­pend­ing on the num­ber of peo­ple they em­ploy.”

In go­ing for­ward, Char­ran said busi­ness own­ers would now have to man­age their costs and in­crease work­ers’ pro­duc­tion to achieve busi­ness growth.

Gen­er­al­ly, Char­ran said he was sat­is­fied with work­ers tak­ing home high­er salaries.

PRO of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion Abra­ham Ali em­braced the pay hike.

“I wel­come the move. I think the in­crease should have gone to $20 per hour, giv­en the high cost of liv­ing,” Ali said.

Un­der­pay­ing an em­ploy­ee, Ali said brings dis­con­tent­ment and poor per­for­mance.

“Some peo­ple pre­fer to stay at home than to come out and work for $150 a day. Day-to-day ex­pens­es does not al­low any­one who makes less than $200 a day to sur­vive.”

Ali said the en­tire bud­get was de­signed to at­tract grass root peo­ple to sup­port the Gov­ern­ment for the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion.

“It is a nice bud­get but no specifics as to how they are go­ing to roll out these new ini­tia­tives.”

Surindra Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent of the Greater Tu­na­puna Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said an em­ploy­er would now have to fork out an ad­di­tion­al $400 a month for each min­i­mum wage work­er.

“The in­crease is not bad when you com­pare it to in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards. It should not af­fect the em­ploy­er too much. I don’t fore­see work­ers go­ing home. “

He said em­ploy­ers have to keep their work­force hap­py with bet­ter wages.

“I per­son­al­ly think the in­crease is long over­due.”