Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert said it was the Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary (PS) in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion who cast doubt on whether the Gov­ern­ment would keep its promise of back­pay for pub­lic ser­vants by Christ­mas.

But yes­ter­day he sought to as­sure pub­lic ser­vants en­ti­tled to it- teach­ers, po­lice of­fi­cers, prison of­fi­cers and fire­fight­ers- whose unions ac­cept­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s four per cent set­tle­ment, that they will be paid be­fore Christ­mas.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter lat­er re­vealed the PS in ques­tion was now “com­ply­ing with Gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.”

Im­bert al­so said the De­fence Force had al­ready im­ple­ment­ed the four per cent in­crease in the last fis­cal year and that all of­fi­cers, which in­clud­ed the Army and Coast Guard, had re­ceived back­pay by Sep­tem­ber 30.

In his 2024 bud­get, Im­bert had said the Gov­ern­ment would bring the 37,000 pub­lic sec­tor work­ers who ac­cept­ed its four per cent ne­go­ti­a­tion of­fer up to their new salary lev­els im­me­di­ate­ly along with a back­pay to­talling $1 bil­lion.

But last week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley cast doubt on whether the back­pay promise would be kept af­ter he dis­closed that an un­named pub­lic ser­vant had said it was not pos­si­ble un­til next May.

Dr Row­ley charged that cer­tain pub­lic ser­vants were un­co­op­er­a­tive by al­leg­ing, “When the PNM is in of­fice every­one is ‘bad’ (de­fi­ant)”

At yes­ter­day’s vir­tu­al press con­fer­ence, Im­bert said it was not the Min­istry of Fi­nance’s per­ma­nent sec­re­taries.

“The Prime Min­is­ter was speak­ing about the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­is­ter was the Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion. I can tell you none of my per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, in the eight years that I have been here, have ever told me that they would not make their best ef­fort to do what­ev­er (was) as­signed them.

“And no per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in this Min­istry of Fi­nance would ever tell me that they are not go­ing to be good on a com­mit­ment giv­en in the an­nu­al bud­get, es­pe­cial­ly since they’re in­volved in the prepa­ra­tion of the bud­get speech and in the prepa­ra­tion of the es­ti­mates,” he said.

Min­istries get­ting help

Im­bert ex­plained two min­istries were in­volved in the back­pay process- the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion and the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

He said that the Min­istry of Fi­nance was work­ing with the min­istries to get the mat­ters sort­ed out.

“They iden­ti­fy the ad­di­tion­al re­sources that they need be­cause the state­ment made by the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to his min­is­ter was based on re­sources that they have at this time. Ob­vi­ous­ly, they need ad­di­tion­al re­sources so that we are work­ing with them to pro­vide Ed­u­ca­tion with the ad­di­tion­al peo­ple that they need to do the cal­cu­la­tions be­cause cal­cu­la­tions have to be done for every sin­gle work­er, teacher in this case.

“They have to look at the pay­ment record go­ing back to 2014 and so on and cal­cu­late the amount of back­pay that is due to them for each teacher. And then each one of those cal­i­bra­tions has to be au­dit­ed. And then a pay­ment file is cre­at­ed with all 17,000 teach­ers and that is cen­tral­ly Trea­sury so that it can be paid by Christ­mas of 2023,” Im­bert ex­plained.

With re­gard to the TTPS, he said that the po­lice were now fi­nal­is­ing the pay­ment files for each po­lice of­fi­cer.

He said af­ter this, they will need to go through the back­pay for each of­fi­cer through the years, and the salary lev­els.

Im­bert said he was “fair­ly con­fi­dent” that the po­lice ser­vice would al­lo­cate suf­fi­cient re­sources “but if they need any, we will as­sist them.”

With re­spect to the prison and fire ser­vices, he not­ed that they are work­ing on the same things- the cal­cu­la­tion of the amount and are quite far ahead.

“So, I am quite con­fi­dent that once every­body pulls to­geth­er, we will achieve the promise that we made to pay these cat­e­gories of work­ers, teach­ers, prison of­fi­cers, fire of­fi­cers, po­lice of­fi­cers, by De­cem­ber,” he said.

Guardian Me­dia texted Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gad­by-Dol­ly to com­ment on the mat­ter but she first in­di­cat­ed that she was not aware of Im­bert’s state­ment and that we should seek clar­i­fi­ca­tion from him.

When Guardian Me­dia ex­plained his state­ment was made at a live press con­fer­ence and sent her Im­bert’s quote, she re­spond­ed: “The PS MoE is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in com­ply­ing with and im­ple­ment­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed pol­i­cy.”