KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

In the last nine years, the prices of fu­el, food and tax­es in­creased sev­er­al times and for about 22,000 pub­lic ser­vants, 2013 was the last time they saw an in­crease in their salaries.

It has left some of them des­per­ate for a rise in re­mu­ner­a­tion.

Pub­lic Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste said yes­ter­day that Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer Dr Daryl Din­di­al has asked the PSA to re­view its pre­vi­ous pro­pos­als re­gard­ing al­lowances.

The PSA is en­gaged in in­ter­nal dis­cus­sions to pro­duce the amend­ed pro­pos­als and sub­mit them to Din­di­al next Fri­day.

Fol­low­ing this, Din­di­al will make counter-pro­pos­als and the par­ties will set a meet­ing for a date no lat­er than May 12.

While ne­go­ti­a­tions have not yet be­gun, Bap­tiste told Guardian Me­dia that Din­di­al took a po­si­tion to not con­sol­i­date the Cost of Liv­ing Al­lowance on­to the work­ers’ salary.

“I am mak­ing sure and en­gag­ing with the in­ter­nal process­es with­in the union to take po­si­tions on both is­sues. I would have in­di­cat­ed to him that we do not ac­cept that he made a state­ment of non-con­sol­i­da­tion that would be deemed an agree­ment. That, at best, is his pro­pos­al, but we are en­ti­tled to look at it and see whether we agree or not. I would have ini­tial­ly told him that I sure­ly do not,” Bap­tiste said.

There were sev­er­al mes­sages cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia re­gard­ing ne­go­ti­a­tions yes­ter­day. Bap­tiste said some were fake news pur­port­ing to be the PSA’s po­si­tion.

How­ev­er, he em­pathis­es with the posters, say­ing des­per­ate work­ers were suf­fer­ing from hope­less­ness. He said many pub­lic sec­tor work­ers could not ac­quire a home on the pub­lic mar­ket as the prices com­pared to their salaries were not com­pa­ra­ble.

“Most peo­ple are still at home, long af­ter they should have left. They are 30, 40 years at their par­ents’ home or rent­ing, throw­ing mon­ey in­to a black hole just try­ing to get a shed over their heads. We have that sit­u­a­tion. Peo­ple are just des­per­ate and ea­ger to get some­thing go­ing.”

He did not want to say how much of an in­crease the PSA would seek for work­ers, say­ing the over­all ob­jec­tive was to en­sure that liv­ing stan­dards do not erode fur­ther and work­ers could main­tain and im­prove their lives. He said the in­creas­ing cost of liv­ing di­min­ished the pur­chas­ing pow­er of salaries.

“If you have a salary of $7,500 and let us say for the pe­ri­od 2014-2016 the cost of liv­ing was 14 per cent. It means that some­body would have a $7,500 salary, but the val­ue of your salary, in terms of pur­chas­ing pow­er, would have been re­duced to $6,450.”

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