Chester says CEO’s Also Affected by Inflation  

On Wednesday, we reported on the approved salary increases for Cabinet Secretary Stuart Leslie and all Chief Executive Officers in the Briceño administration, effective the day after the 2025 general elections. The Cabinet Secretary’s annual salary jumped to ninety-six thousand dollars, while the CEOs’ salaries rose to eighty-eight thousand dollars. The Public Service Union quickly criticized the move, accusing the government of ignoring public servants’ concerns. Today, we asked Chester Williams, the incoming C.E.O. of the Ministry of Transport, for his opinion on the matter. Here’s what he had to say.

 

Chester Williams, Incoming CEO of Transport

 “I’m not gonna say no, that  the government workers don’t deserve an increase. I do believe that majority of government workers deserve an increase, but when we speak of increase, we have to look at what the government can afford. What people don’t understand is that as public officers, we get increase every year.  You may not want to say it, but every year public officers get an increase. That increase come by way of an annual increment, which is equivalent to three percent of your salary. While from what I see, CEOs don’t get an annual increase. They get one flat salary. And that salary they get up until when they start become CEO. So if you were to calculate what CEOs were making four or five years ago and you compare what a public officer would’ve making four or five years ago, you would see that the public officer had made significant progress in salary while the CEOs did not. So I’m not saying that to justify anything. I’m just saying that. At the end of the day, inflation affects everybody. It not it is, it does not only affect the ordinary public offices, but it also affects the CEOs. So I guess that is split in which the increase was looked at. And if you were to take the old salaries of the CEOs and you add 3three percent to that every year from six years ago to now, it would still be more than eighty-eight thousand dollars.”