Teachers to get a 5% salary adjustment

Dean Barrow

Teachers and public officers will get a salary adjustment in July, retroactive to April. The increase has been the subject of heated discussion and intense negotiations, but it appears, at least as far as verbal commitment is concerned, to be set in stone. The quantum has been the unknown factor and as the numbers continue to be crunched, the figure keeps changing. Fortunately for those who are waiting anxiously for this government promise to be delivered, the change is by way of an increase. One month ago it looked like three percent, two weeks ago it stood at four percent, and today P.M. Barrow announced that teachers and public officers will receive a five percent increase, in addition to a two point five percent annual increment. That’s huge news, and amount to a twenty-two million dollar increase in the wage bill. The question now has to be…is that sustainable in the atmosphere of changing government fortunes?

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Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“We’ve just gone over the numbers this afternoon and I can tell you that it is clear that the teachers will get five percent; teachers and public officers—we keep saying teachers because they’ve made the most noise. This is teachers and public officers will get by our reckoning five percent in addition to the two point five percent annual increment. We keep saying two percent, but it is two and three resulting in a two point five percent annual increment. So the five percent increment we are talking about is outside of the two point five percent. We are looking at twenty-two million dollars more in salaries to public officers and teachers and by our calculations that represents not less than a five percent salary increase. When the teachers were out there raising this ruckus talking about a floor of five percent, I kept saying look, it has appeared that the numbers would give us not less than four percent. But what was important was that whatever increase the numbers give us, we knew from them that most of it would have been as a consequence of revenue surge that we got by way of reacquiring the registries and the unlocking of the B.T.L. dividends. And I said, teachers in particular need to understand that this sense of entitlement in a vacuum can’t work. We have to raise the revenue in order to pay for these salary increases. So Jules’ point that number one, we are being sued for the repossession of the registry; if these people were to succeed and we need to pay compensation for that, the teachers and the public officers don’t care, don’t need to care; that’s not their business. We, nevertheless, have to give them as was promised this twenty-two million dollars which is half of the recurrent revenue increase, according to the numbers.”