LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION Clyde Mascoll says proposed double-digit salary hikes for top politicians and senior civil servants are "outrageous".
He was responding to Government's plans revealed yesterday to go to Parliament with a package of legislation to increase the salaries of members of the House of Assembly and Senate, public officers in the Super ("S") scale and the heads of nursery, primary, composite and secondary schools.
"I believe the headteachers deserve a regrading, but the ministers of Government don't deserve a cent more," said Mascoll, whose salary will move from the $86 646.96 of the April 2003 settlement to $105 712.44 from April 2005.
The revisions are based on recommendations arising from the Job Evaluation Exercise conducted between 2001 and 2004, and provide for two increases: from September 1, 2004, and April 1, 2005.
Mascoll suggested that the exercise was an "evaluation" rather than a "regrading" and that the posts of politicians ought – as a matter of principle – to have been evaluated, as well to justify the increases, which amounted to 22.5 per cent for the top tier politicians and civil servants between April 2003 and April 2005, and 22 per cent for other senior parliamentary officers and Government officials.
But he also felt the timing of the hikes, which were the subject of radio call-in programmes most of yesterday, was wrong.
"On the one hand," Mascoll said, "you have average Barbadian workers reeling under the pressure of increases in the cost of living: food prices are going through the roof, water rates have gone up, gas prices went up by 27 per cent, house rents and land prices are moving beyond the reaches of the average Bajan, increases in interest rates have now pushed mortgage payments to new heights for current homeowners and potential borrowers, and things are getting worse daily.
"At the same time, you have the governor of the Central Bank calling for wage restraint and saying there is no need for wage increases in the face of rising prices.
"The Prime Minister himself last year sought to lay the blame for the escalating deficit at the feet of the workers. How do you justify, therefore, coming to Parliament now for these massive increases for ministers and those at the top of the pay scale when workers across the private and public sectors are settling for two and three per cent?"
