P.M. Briceño Says Unions’ April 1st Ultimatum is Unfortunate

Prime Minister John Briceño

Prime Minister Briceño has also responded to the unions who have also issued an April first deadline for the unfreezing of increments for public officers.  The ultimatum follows a series of concerns raised by the Public Service Union, as well as the Association of Public Service Senior Managers, last week.  Along with the discussion on reinstating increments, the prime minister also says that it is high time to discuss pension reform.

Prime Minister John Briceño

“I think it is unfortunate when the unions would want to come and say well, you know, we are going to put it by the first of April, you know, as if we don’t want to come to the table.  We want to come to the table, we’ve been telling them that we are prepared to meet with them and their demands about the increment, to unfreeze the increment.  We’ve said we’re prepared to do that.  We’ve never said that we don’t want to do that.  The agreement was the salary cut for three years, we only did it for one year.  We said the increment freeze for three years, we’re prepared to unfreeze after the second year.  So it’s only going to be, so for the third year we are prepared to do that.  But what we’ve been telling the unions is two things.  In the private sector, you get an increment based on your performance.  Many members in the public sector believe that increments should be automatic.  If that were so, then that means that we’d have a salary increase every year, then that’s not an increment, that’s a salary increase.  So we are saying that we are prepared to do that but we need to put in a better system for these increments to be issued based on merit, based on performance. And secondly, this is the time now that we have to talk about pension reform.  The pension reform is a non-contributory pension system or scheme that we have presently and it is unsustainable.  This year it’s about a hundred million dollars and I am sorry, when Mr. Flowers would say things like, “Well that da wahn numba weh dehn tell we.”  All he needs to do is to look at the budget, the numbers are right there.”