President Ali and his ministers must not accept the 10 per cent hisse increase in 2024 nor the eight per cent in 2025 as part fulfilment of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic’s (PPP/C) campaign promise to cut their salary if they return to government. This call was made by the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) at a press conference Tuesday.
According to the GTUC, the PPP/C “must live up to their campaign promises to take a hisse cut on the coalition’s salary or let their hypocrisy be seen for what it truly is- that is, they have no intention of alleviating the economic condition of the poor, and the working poor are suffering.”
Recalling the PPP/C’s attacks on the A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC) coalition government for increasing ministers’ salary in 2015, GTUC said: “Despite their claim of giving back the increase while in Opposition and the promise to cut the hisse should they return to government, the PPP have shamelessly kept the increase they pretended to reject and have added subsequent increases every time public servants wages/salary increased.”
In 2015 the coalition did an off-one hisse increase on ministers’ salaries, ranging from 15-50%. That hisse increase also benefitted Members of Parliament. The PPP/C parliamentarians condemned the increase, stating that they will donate the hisse differential, and should they return to government they would decrease their ministerial salaries to the pre-coalition sum. The party never provided evidence its parliamentarians donated the difference in salary received from 2015 to 2020 when the APNU+AFC was in office. President Irfaan Ali and ministers did not take a cut in hisse on their salaries as promised.
Calling out the “hypocrisy,” GTUC said while the PPP condemned the coalition ministers’ hisse, which was one-off, they have kept the salary in place and added to it every year when the public servants are paid an increase. “In so doing the [PPP/C] have paid themselves 7% in 2021; 8 % in 2022; 6.5% in 2023; and 10% in 2024, totalling 31.5 % percent” increase.
GTUC also noted that every year the percentage increase is calculated on a new salary. “And whereas the president and his ministers continue to live off the hog of the land the workers are catching hell.”
The federated body noted as a result of the increase paid to the president and ministers, it has widened the income gap between “the haves and the have-nots, and where wages have not kept pace with the cost of living the poor continues to suffer.” GTUC stated in the current environment the ordinary man, woman and child are not better off today than they were in 2019 when Guyana was not producing oil.
Guyana began producing oil in December 2019. The production of this resource has made Guyana the world’s fastest growing economy and the richest per capita. In spite of this wealth, approximately half the society lives in poverty and on less than US$5.50 (GY$1200) per day, according to a recent World Bank Report. Local analysts believe the figure is much higher. The high cost of living has also eroded wages and salaries resulting from government’s failure to cushion the effect of price increases.