PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad, CMC—Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley says his Government will accept the recommendations of an independent Salaries Review Commission (SRC) for an increase in salaries for senior public officials and legislators, brushing aside Opposition Leader Kamla Persad Bissessar’s public statements that she would not accept an increase in salary.
The 120th SRC report has since been laid in the Parliament. Persad Bissessar said that while the salaries for public servants and judicial officers should be increased, she does not favor politicians benefiting from the increase now.
But Rowley, speaking at a news conference here, said, “I am not one to shy away from my responsibilities.
‘The responsibilities of the Office of the Prime Minister are quite onerous, not pleasant every day, and when it becomes personalized, I take my exit from that, and on the SRC report, you will not see my name; you will see a recommendation as to what is reasonable,” regarding the payments to the office.
“The decision I have to make is whether it is reasonable,” he said, adding that he also has to decide on the salary increases for senior public servants as recommended by the SRC.
“That is a decision for the prime minister to make, and I have made it,” he said, adding that as Prime Minister, “I bear that cross without fear of retribution”.
The STC has recommended that, with effect from October 1, 2020, the current salary of the Opposition Leader be TT$29,590 (One TT doTT$ 52,159).
The report recommended that the Prime Minister receive TT$80,000 from October 1, 2020, to September 30, 2023, and then increase his monthly salary to $ TT87,847 from October 1, 2023.
It also recommended raising the President’s salary from TT$67,270 to TT$73,920 from April 1, 2020, to March 31, 2023, and to TT$81,170 from April 1, 2023.
However, the opposition leader has said that she does not agree “with any salary increase for the President, prime minister, or myself as leader of the Opposition. Our salaries are enough at this point.
“However, as I previously stated, I have no objection to increasing the salaries of our public servants and judicial officers. This is a matter for the Government. The Opposition has no say. I said previously that the Opposition should have its say; the Government has its way. That is how the Parliament works.
“So that is for the Government to decide where they want to go. But I would say this: people are only looking at the parliamentarians, but it also covers all the senior public servants who work very hard,” she said.
Rowley said in seeking to mislead the public by saying that she does not want the salary increase as a former prime minister, “While she is stirring up the heat, she knows very well that nothing going on there will affect her.
“Because as a former prime minister, her payout from a pension angle is already certain under the Pension Act, and in so far that she is still functioning in the Parliament, arrangements are being made that even when the new highest level that is being offered …she is still not affected in any way.
“I want the population to know that and to receive their recommendation in that context,” Rowley said, telling reporters that the Opposition Leader was playing “politics.
“If there are those who believe that the country’s leadership is of no value…and should be ashamed to accept the recommendation of a Commission whose job it is to have done the work and to make recommendations to a Cabinet.
“If it is a view that one should be ashamed and should hide from that, I take full responsibility for advising the Cabinet that after 13 years of this work that the members of SRC report, it is a matter for the Cabinet and the Cabinet should have no difficulty in concluding that matter”.
Rowley said that the SRC would make the recommendations and that “dealing with it by acceptance is a political issue. It always has been and always will be.
“And that is why today when I tell the country that we will accept the recommendation, I am prepared to deal with it as a political issue. I am not surprised that the Opposition Leader is out of the blocks trying to get a leg up.”
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