President not a beneficiary of salary increases for constitutional offices

Minister of Finance Winston Jordan has clarified that President David Granger will not receive the recently gazetted salary increases for holders of Constitutional Offices.

According to an Order published Monday in the Official Gazette but dated December 3rd, 2019, the schedule of the Constitutional Offices (Remuneration of Holders) Act is amended as of January 1, 2019 to reflect the salary increases granted to members of the Public Service.

The new minimum wage of $70,000 will apply to those officers who received $64,220 or less, those previously receiving more than $64,000 but less than $100,000 will receive a 9% salary increase, while those earning between $100,000 and $1 million will receive an 8.5% increase.

Finally, according to the Order, those earning more than $1 million will receive a 3% increase.

Though the Act lists the President of Guyana as the holder of a constitutional office, Jordan is adamant that there has been no increase in the President’s salary since 2015.

In a statement issued yesterday, he condemned an

article published by the online news site Citizens Report as “patently false”

“Had there been an increase in the President’s salary, there would have been a corresponding increase in the pensions received by the three exPresidents – Bharrat Jagdeo, Samuel Hinds and Donald Ramotar,” Jordan explained, before adding that a quick check of the pensions of any of the three ex-Presidents would have shown that they have remained the same since 2015.

Reminding that it was Jagdeo who linked the presidential pensions to the salary of the current president rather than the salary of the president at the time he demits office, Jordan lamented that “a welldeserved increase in wages and salaries for public servants should be twisted into a blatantly false claim.”

He went on to reiterate that the latest increase in the minimum wage represents an overall increase of 77 per cent since the governing coalition took office in 2015. “This is a tangible demonstration of the government’s commitment to building a Good Life For All Guyanese, as we enter the Decade of Development,” Jordan stated.