Flowers Says GOB Not Serious About High Wage Bill

But can the government afford to hire new directors? The Prime Minister has said that the government is broke and earlier this year, all public officers and teachers were given a salary cut and increment freeze. P.S.U. President Dean Flowers does not believe that the Briceño administration is serious about addressing the high wage bill. He says that while vacant posts are being filled, a lot of new jobs are also being created and the salaries are on a higher pay scale. 

Dean Flowers

Dean Flowers, President, Public Service Union

“The government was never and is never honest about addressing the public sector wage bill. We have been saying that since November, despite this government coming to public officers and strong-arming ten percent of their salary and freezing their increments for four years – three under this administration and one under the Barrow administration – they continue to hire people despite the high wage bill. This move alone will now require us to hire an additional person as a head of department at the highest end of the pay scale. Well let me rephrase that. HODs as we understand it and as we know should be at pay scale twenty-five, but there are some animals that are more equal than others that are now at pay scale twenty-seven and perhaps who knows where they’ll put these two newly created posts. I don’t know. This administration is not serious about curtailing the wage bill. As a matter of fact, even though they may disagree, this administration is merely maintaining an unsustainable wage bill and in my view, in the next five years, we may very well see a wage bill much higher than they found it.”