"The truth is that every politician pays out money every week, every month, to be able to help people who are in difficulties for whatever kind of reason," she told the VOB radio call-in programme Down To Brass Tacks yesterday.

"So whether he claims he is taking it in whole or whether he is putting it in trust for his constituents, he still receives a benefit from it."

Mottley, who was responding to comments by Mascoll and other callers on the controversy over proposed pay hikes for politicians and senior Government officials consequent upon the results of a three-year re-evaluation exercise, said the whole issue had been cast in the wrong light.

She recalled that the principle of politicians' salaries being linked to the salaries of public officers was agreed by a Democratic Labour Party Cabinet in 1991 which confirmed what a Barbados Labour Party Cabinet had done in 1978.

Responding to a suggestion that the people were saying that the circumstances of the country at the moment did not suggest that they had to accept the principle of a three per cent differential between top public servants and politicians, Mottley said the real increases and real burden on Government arose by reason of the fact that there were several public servants for whom the issue of job evaluation was key.

"You remember three to four years ago when the police went on work-to-rule; you remember the nurses also coming out and asking for theirs; the Government honoured its commitment to them. Now . . . the exercise of job evaluation took three years. It meant that a number of positions throughout the public service have been re-evaluated and repositioned in the context of the service. To suggest that you don't want to go forward with that is a different matter."

Mottley said it was an "unfortunate view" for people to suggest that politicians should not be seen to be piggy-backing on the exercise since their own jobs had not been re-evaluated.

"That is an unfortunate view largely because if you do that, it would mean that any relativity between politician and public servants would be eroded and further, to say that politicians shouldn't be paid in this country.

"Are you saying that there should not be a relativity between the person who heads the ministry and the person who is the administrative and financial head?"

She said the three per cent relativity was not cast in stone, but pointed out that Barbados was perhaps one of the most conservative countries in the region, in that unlike their counterparts in Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, local politicians did not get housing allowances for domestic help or gardening, or duty-free salaries and cars, although she was not suggesting that they should.

"Another thing that the public don't know is that ministers who are MPs receive the same thing as ministers who are senators," she noted.

"Mr Mascoll is paid for being a Member of Parliament. Backbenchers are paid for being Members of Parliament and they are allowed to work separately. It is the only category of workers in Barbados that does work that they are not paid for.

"Now we have not chosen to put that on the table because we are sensitive to the fact that you don't want to now treat to an issue that may lead to even more confirmation on the part of the public at a time when you are dealing with a class, mainly the ministerial class, in isolation from the rest of the society.

"If you take a decision to regrade, to re-evaluate public servants, the natural [consequence] would be that ministers would be paid less than the permanent secretaries. Is that what the country wants?"