Cumulative salary and wage increases for public servants since 2015 varied depending on their bands
Dear Editor,
In an article published by the Guyana Chronicle on November 11, 2019, the Minister of Finance said that public servants received more than a 75 percent increase in wages and salaries for the period 20152019. Specifically, the article quoted the Minister as saying, “… By the time we are finished with salaries for this year, I can guarantee you that between July 1, 2015, and January 1, 2019, it will be over 75 percent increase.”
It is instructive to note that the Minister did not make any distinction between increases granted to public servants who received the minimum wage and those earning above the minimum wage. He referred to wages and salaries, generally, which is disingenuous. The fact is that the minimum wage increased from $39,540 (old minimum wage) and $42,703 in 2015 to 70,000 in 2019. The increases in the minimum wage, therefore, ranged between 77 and 63 percent.
However, the average public servant earning above the minimum wage would have received less than 70 percent over the same period. The reason for this is simple. Salary increases were granted on a sliding scale. The table below shows the salary increases given to public servants earning above the minimum wage.
North America, “dynamic civic movements for justice and inclusion continue to expan[d] the scope of what citizens can and should expect from democracy.”
Countering this progressive trend, illiberal actors like president Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil “damage democracies internally through their dismissive attitude toward core civil and political rights, and they weaken the cause of democracy around the world with their unilateralist reflexes.”
But, as the Hong Kong protests continue to show, democracy has to be defended tenaciously if it is to have a secure future. It is worth remembering that a century ago, in the wake of the Great War, practically none of Europe’s major states had
If we were to compute the cumulative increases over the period 20152019, they would approximate to 52.4 percent, 39.17 percent, 33.75%, 28.23% and 20.84 percent for those earning below $100,000, $100,000300,000, $300,000-$500,000, $500,000-$800,000 and $800,000-$1 million respectively. The claim that salaries and wages increased by 70 percent is as disingenuous as the arguments advanced by his colleague Basil Williams regarding the majority of 65. It is also an insult to the intelligence of public servants who know they did not receive increases anywhere close to 70 percent. established the democratic governance we associate them with today. Furthermore, in several of the most important countries, whatever progress had been made was quickly erased by totalitarian ideologues, necessitating decades of political struggle before it could be restored. That is a warning from the past that we should not lightly ignore.