Akash Sama­roo

Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) Com­man­der Dr Daryl Din­di­al says he an­tic­i­pates the “ten per cent” wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) to be­gin in the last week of No­vem­ber when he re­turns to the coun­try, as he is cur­rent­ly abroad on busi­ness. 

He made the com­ment to Guardian Me­dia late Mon­day, just hours af­ter PSA Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas ac­cused him of stalling the start of the talks.

Yes­ter­day, Thomas ex­pressed her “an­noy­ance” with the CPO over what she de­scribed as his de­lay in com­ing to the bar­gain­ing ta­ble to ho­n­our the Gov­ern­ment’s promised ten per cent salary in­crease for pub­lic ser­vants.

As Thomas pre­pared to ad­dress her mem­bers to­day, she told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, “Some­thing doesn’t seem right.”

She said she wrote to the CPO last week propos­ing sev­er­al days for a po­ten­tial meet­ing, how­ev­er, re­ceived no re­sponse.

How­ev­er, CPO Din­di­al re­spond­ed to ques­tions re­gard­ing Thomas’ com­ments from Guardian Me­dia last evening.

“I am out of the ju­ris­dic­tion on of­fi­cial busi­ness. I re­turn next week by which time the prepara­to­ry work would be fi­nalised. As such, I re­cent­ly re­quest­ed the process com­mence on my re­turn home,” Dr Din­di­al said.

Asked when ex­act­ly he ex­pects the wage talks to be­gin, the CPO said, “I an­tic­i­pate last week in No­vem­ber.”

He added that he will be reach­ing out to the PSA to­day.

“The CPO’s of­fice will be com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the PSA to­mor­row to ad­vise them on the sta­tus of our prepa­ra­tions. Rest as­sured we are al­so fi­nal­is­ing spe­cif­ic in­for­ma­tion briefs from the Min­istry of Fi­nance to com­mence the process.”

While the CPO said his of­fice does not ne­go­ti­ate or dis­close cer­tain in­for­ma­tion in the pub­lic do­main re­gard­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions that have yet to com­mence, he sought to ex­plain how nu­anced the prepa­ra­tion process is.

“There must be a firm un­der­stand­ing and ex­pres­sion of our re­cent, cur­rent and pro­ject­ed macro­eco­nom­ic pro­file to set the foun­da­tion for dis­cus­sion.

That ap­proach is not on­ly re­spon­si­ble, it is crit­i­cal to guide dis­cus­sions.”

The pro­posed wage in­crease will cov­er two pe­ri­ods: 2014–2016 and 2017–2019, rep­re­sent­ing a five per cent in­crease for each pe­ri­od.

Thomas has ex­pressed her de­sire to have the ne­go­ti­a­tions com­plet­ed and sub­se­quent pay­ments made by Christ­mas.