Gouveia gives gov’t thumbs up on Ministerial pay increase

Last Updated on Tuesday, 20 October 2015, 15:38 by GxMedia

A long-standing member of Guyana’s private sector corps has given his no objection to the recent move by the APNU+AFC administration to increase the salaries of Government Ministers by 50%.

The move, which has attracted criticism and condemnation from others, Former Private Sector Commission (PSC) Chairman Gerry Gouveia says that the timing may have been bad but that does not mean it is not a good thing.

“The fact that it happened so quickly, the timing may have been a challenge but I would say that I really don’t have an objection to an increase of salaries cause I want them to be able to perform,” he said.

More in depth into the situation, Captain Gouveia believes that now the electorate can adequately judge the work produced by the Government Ministers.

“I actually believe that it is long overdue. I think we must pay our leaders adequate salaries for them to live and then we can judge them by the work they produce,” said Gouveia adding “Now we can judge them by the results they deliver to us. Now they can understand and have a better appreciation that they must support salary increase across the board for our public servants but I have no problem taking care of our Ministers and paying them proper salaries.”

Veteran Guyanese politician, Ralph Ramkarran on Sunday recommended a rescue plan that the coalition government could use to pull itself out of the mountain of condemnation over its decision to increase ministers’ salaries, while offering mixed reasons.

Writing in his weekly “Conversation Tree” column, Ramkarran said the mess that the administration of President David Granger has found itself should be addressed urgently by a special face-saving mechanism.

“If the Government wants to recover some semblance of rectitude it may wish to consider the establishment of a permanent, statutory, structure, to which reference has been made above, and publicly commit to asking the body to review the recent increases and decide whether they are compatible with normally accepted principles and the disparities that existed immediately before the increases,” he said in his column of Saturday, October 17, 2015 titled “The Honeymoon is Over.”

Ramkarran said such a concession would go a far away to remove public disquiet over the matter. At the same time, he cautioned that the disquiet would remain even when the matter is overtaken by other events.