Gov’t willing to work with GPSU on eligibility for subsidy- Ashni Singh

Last Updated on Thursday, 6 February 2025, 22:25 by Writer

The Minister of Finance, Dr Ashni Singh, on Wednesday said the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) could not receive the GY$2 million annual subsidy from the government because that union had not submitted its audited financial statements for a number of years.

“I’m perfectly happy to have a conversation with the GPSU on what we can do, perhaps, to help remedy that situation and to ensure that they get the resources that we are budgeting to provide to them,” he said.

He was responding to Shadow Public Service Minister, Tabita Sarabo-Halley’s question about the recurrent allocation but no disbursement of the subsidy to the GPSU during consideration of the 2025 national budgetary estimates of expenditure.

Dr Singh highlighted that the Guyana government and the GPSU had an ‘excellent engagement” which produced a wages and salaries agreement for the first time in many years.

Meanwhile, the Finance Minister restated that the eight percent wage and salary increase for 2025 would be paid retroactively to January 1.