The last time I saw my own pay slip, I think I saw a reduction that lowers my standard of living. That is in place as far as I am aware. – Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, confirming that a ten per cent pay cut for Government’s political appointees in is effect, April 24.
Within the next couple of days, that is, by month end, Government is expected to reach the end of the first phase of its fiscal consolidation programme that mainly consists of the retrenchment of a projected 3 000 public workers and salary cuts for “political appointees” including the Cabinet.
“We couldn’t conscientiously be asking other people to make sacrifices while we continued to behave as though there was no crisis or challenge to the country,” Prime Minister Stuart told journalists at the reopening and renaming of Farrs Children’s Home in St Peter.
“I think Government had to lead by example in all of this,” he added, noting a slight delay in terms of letters of consent having to be signed by the ministers’ personal staff.
While in the December 13 Ministerial Statement in the House of Assembly Government was quite clear about the estimated number of public workers – from central Government and statutory entities – that would be affected, it now seems less assured about what the final figure would be three months after the measures began to take effect.
Indeed, that Prime Minister Stuart himself, as Head of Government, is either unsure or worse, unaware, of the true number of people sent home so far or are to be retrenched, should not surprise anyone who has been following the – I almost said progress, but that could be interpreted in some quarters as being partisan – approach of this Government to the current economic crisis.
Apparently in response to media questions last Wednesday, Stuart was reported as saying he would not get into “the numbers game” since this was where Government had “gone wrong” in the first place.
“The Government has budgetary objectives which it has to achieve and it is not the numbers as much as the achievement of the budgetary objectives that concerns me as Prime Minister,” he said, describing the numbers as “an unfortunate diversion” that had caused Barbadians to lose sight of the real objective.
It is perhaps symptomatic of where we are as a country in the midst of these economic difficulties that on the same day that a union which is a minor player in public service representation was crowing about saving 50 of 250 targeted retrenchments at the National Conservation Commission (NCC), the Prime Minister was reporting on a ten per cent salary cut for Cabinet ministers and their personal staff, whilst lamenting a consequential fall in “my standard of living”.
I’m hoping that he said that with tongue firmly in cheek.
But the truth, gentle reader, is that I almost fell off the chair when I read the comment, and upon recovery, I had perforce to read it again to make sure my failing eyesight did not deceive me. But you can read it again and draw your own conclusions about the care and concern for those who are either on, or about to be placed on, the breadline through no fault of their own, but as a direct result of the mismanagement of the economy by this Administration.
When Government hurriedly reached a last-minute accord almost at the airport with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which stubbornly delayed the mission’s departure last December until it had squeezed certain “assurances” out of the local authorities, the lay-off numbers were given but there was no indication that they had been writ by “the moving finger” which then moved on.
It struck some of us then that it was somewhat incongruous that such a major, and certainly unprecedented policy shift (a salary cut targeting ministers and personal staff) should have been announced by the beleaguered Minister of Finance rather than the head of the Government responsible for the state of the economy, which necessitated such drastic action.
This Government’s focus, the Prime Minister avers, is not on the numbers sent home or those about to get their last pay cheque, but on the bigger picture.
All that was missing from the Prime Minister’s revealing remarks was the tired, worn out, clichéd “shared sacrifice”.
So while some former public workers don’t know where their next meal will come from, the Prime Minister is seeing his standard of living taking a slight dip.
• Albert Brandford is an independent political correspondent.