APNU doubles down on promises: says 35% salary increase not for everyone, $200K minimum wage unlikely
After making a slew of promises to the Guyanese people, the People’s National Congress Reform has doubled down on many of those promises which includes salary increases for public servants.
Since last year, the PNCR has repeatedly promised all public servants that if it were re-elected to office, it would increase wages and salaries by 35% across the board.
The party claimed that this massive increase would bring relief to Guyanese amid rising cost of living.
In a statement today, however, the party said that it cannot offer a salary increase of 35% to all public servants, and that single digit increases – 1% to 9% – would be offered to some categories of workers.
“We are looking at a graduated salary increase, starting from 35% at the bottom to single-digit increases at the top,” the party said.
Further, it noted that the $200,000 minimum wage it has been promising Guyanese is still under review, and is unlikely to happen because of the impact it can have on the private sector.
“This matter remains under our active consideration because of its serious repercussions for the private sector. When in government, we will have the data to accurately calculate the true financial cost of this measure, after factoring in higher salaries and the tax-free threshold,” the party said in its statement.
The statement from the PNCR was in response to criticisms from Finance Minister Dr. Ashni Singh who highlighted in the National Assembly on Thursday that the opposition PNCR and AFC are making unrealistic promises to Guyanese without any consideration of how they will fund these massive increases.
In fact, Dr. Singh highlighted a few of the promises made by the opposition which amounted to $799 billion increase in recurrent expenditure, at a time when Guyana is only earning roughly $500 billion from oil revenues.
A number of other promises made by the PNCR have been described by the business community and the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) as “unrealistic”.
In fact, General Secretary of the PPP, Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo has contended that the political strategy of the APNU and AFC is to out-promise the PPP with the hope that the Guyanese people will forget their track record of increasing new takes and taking away subsidies.
