No Deferral of Increments for Public Officers

Dean Barrow

To further emphasize make the point that the P.S.U. is being irrational by rejecting government’s proposal to waive increments, PM Barrow says that when the economy rebounds other public sector workers will not be receiving monies that they have since relinquished.  Conversely, the P.S.U. has proposed a deferral which would mean that government would still have to pay out increments for this year at a later date.

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“It is not fair for the public servants, who are not having their substantive salaries touched to insist that we won’t give up, we will merely defer.  When you compare it with the others in the very public sector such as the CEOs, such as the contract officers.  What they give up they won’t get back you know.  When they give up that five percent of their gratuity, when they cut their entertainment or other allowances in half, it is not by way of any deferral.  It is by way of a cessation.  Why on earth should the other public officers, the bulk of the public service, insist that everybody else must give up completely for a year in the first instance, but they must not.  I don’t think that is fair, we have to try to preserve some notion of equity and in that context we continue to insist that it should not and cannot be a deferral.”