Two of the coun­try’s largest trade unions have de­scribed the im­ple­men­ta­tion this month of in­creased salaries for politi­cians as a wicked, dis­grace­ful and hyp­o­crit­i­cal move by Gov­ern­ment.

In fact, the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) is call­ing on the pop­u­la­tion to op­pose this move at the polls.

On Wednes­day, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert con­firmed the in­creased salaries will take ef­fect from Feb­ru­ary and when asked by Guardian Me­dia if the State had the funds to ac­com­mo­date it, he said, “Well I would think so.”

How­ev­er, labour or­gan­i­sa­tions such as the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) and PSA be­lieve this is a slap in the face of work­ers.

In 2022, dur­ing the bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Min­is­ter Im­bert said Gov­ern­ment could not risk bank­rupt­ing the coun­try as he ex­plained why four per cent was be­ing of­fered to pub­lic ser­vants.

But yes­ter­day PSA pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste de­scribed the de­ci­sion to im­ple­ment the pay in­creas­es for State of­fi­cials as “hypocrisy per­son­i­fied”.

“There’s a gold­en rule in life, do on­to oth­ers as you’d have them do on­to you. If you don’t like it for your­self, you ought not to like it for oth­ers. But clear­ly, this par­tic­u­lar ad­min­is­tra­tion, I wish there’s an­oth­er word that I could find, some eu­phemistic way of say­ing wicked. But I can’t, I’m lost for any oth­er word oth­er than it’s an act of wicked­ness, it’s an act of hypocrisy, and they have done noth­ing oth­er than fix them­selves,” Bap­tiste said.

He urged the work­ing class to send a clear mes­sage to lead­ers dur­ing the gen­er­al elec­tions.

“They say Trinida­di­ans have their nine-day won­der so­ci­ety where you re­mem­ber for a few days and then it’s for­got­ten. I pray that they re­mem­ber at the ap­pro­pri­ate time. Be­cause in the fi­nal analy­sis, the cit­i­zen­ry has the last say,” he added.

Bap­tiste said the PSA will not be budg­ing from its re­ject­ing of 4 per cent in­crease.

“I have seen bul­lies. Bul­lies will be bul­lies. But the one thing that I com­mit to, and my God, I hope that the work­ers com­mit to, is that we must fight them.”

JTUM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ozzi War­wick said the im­pend­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion of the high­er wages is a “con­tin­ued pat­tern of com­plete in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty, dis­re­gard, dis­re­spect and dis­con­nect from the hard­ships of or­di­nary work­ing peo­ple”

He said Im­bert’s re­sponse on the avail­abil­i­ty of funds is a dis­grace. “You just have to find the mon­ey. So, what we have is a po­lit­i­cal elite, who are in a po­si­tion of priv­i­lege and hav­ing no dif­fi­cul­ty what­so­ev­er in pro­vid­ing for them­selves and com­plete­ly dis­re­gard­ing the pain, suf­fer­ing, and con­cerns of or­di­nary peo­ple.”

Mean­while, econ­o­mists be­lieve im­ple­ment­ing the salary in­crease and say­ing mon­ey is there to do so reeks of se­lec­tive fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and can deep­en so­cial ten­sions.

Ac­cord­ing to Dr Vaalmi­ki Ar­joon, “Such ac­tions do raise crit­i­cal ques­tions about where the fis­cal pri­or­i­ties re­al­ly lie. It rais­es ques­tions about eq­ui­ty, and it po­ten­tial­ly erodes the trust be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and its work­force. The sit­u­a­tion al­so high­lights the re­al­i­ty that gov­ern­ments of­ten find funds for their favoured ini­tia­tives.

“So, the mes­sage con­veyed to the pub­lic is one of se­lec­tive fi­nan­cial man­age­ment where cer­tain seg­ments re­ceive pref­er­en­tial treat­ment and this can neg­a­tive­ly im­pact morale and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty leav­ing work­ers feel­ing un­der­val­ued and mar­gin­alised,” he added.

And Dr In­dera Sage­wan said politi­cians do not de­serve a pay in­crease at this time as she claimed they have done very lit­tle to grow the econ­o­my.

“In my hum­ble view, I would ar­gue that cer­tain­ly, the politi­cians have not done the work that is re­quired to jus­ti­fy this be­cause their man­date that was of­fered to us and that was ac­cept­ed by the pop­u­la­tion spoke to a dif­fer­ent econ­o­my to­day.”

She again said Gov­ern­ment should lead by ex­am­ple since it has asked cit­i­zens to tight­en their belts.

“And even if the min­is­ter can in fact com­fort­ably find the mon­ey to meet this SRC, ful­fill­ing the ap­proval of the SRC rec­om­men­da­tion, the Gov­ern­ment sim­ply should not be­cause it is the wrong thing to do at this time.”

The SRC’s rec­om­men­da­tions pro­pose back pay ex­ceed­ing $150 mil­lion for 118 of­fices, in­clud­ing sig­nif­i­cant pay­outs for MPs and Cab­i­net Min­is­ters.