Dear Editor,

Trinidad and Tobago is an oil-rich Caribbean country. Its GDP per capita is US $17,158. Guyana is a downtrodden poor country with a GDP per capita of US $2869, almost six times less than Trinidad. Over a hundred thousand Guyanese have fled from Guyana to Trinidad for a better life. There are many starving themselves in Guyana by rationing what they can eat to make ends meet every day in this country. These people are the forgotten working class poor, discarded by the PPP. So, what is Trinidad with its GDP per capita six times Guyana paying its top civil servants compared to destitute Guyana? The 89th Report of the Salary Review Commission of Trinidad & Tobago noted that the Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister and Head of the Public Service, a position similar to that held by Roger Luncheon as Head of OP, was paid TT $29,300 or $922,007 Guyana dollars per month. Roger Luncheon who is head of OP in a failed state created by the PPP gets paid $895,326 Guyana dollars. The Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago, a country with a GDP per capita six times that of Guyana and a nation that is a developed nation compared to the filth and wreckage of the PPP’s Guyana is paid just $26,681 more than Roger Luncheon, the very man who reportedly said under oath there were no qualified Africans in Guyana to hold key ambassadorial postings. Well, what qualifies Roger Luncheon to obtain a salary on par with his counterpart in wealthy Trinidad and Tobago? Presidential Advisor, Gail Teixeira, reportedly earns $967,985, which is shockingly more than the Head of the Presidential Secretariat and more than the Permanent Secretary to the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago earns.

Hydar Ally as Deputy Head of the Office of the President collects $550,064, which is more than the Clerk of the Trinidad and Tobago Senate and Deputy Secretary to the T&T Cabinet. Major General (ret’d) Joseph G Singh who serves in the OP as a Special Assistant to the President is paid some $667,440, which is more than the monthly salaries of the Head of T&T’s Elections and Boundaries Commission and all of all the Chairmen of the various Service Commissions in Trinidad. When Kwame McKoy, that incredible danger to decency and mocker of competency, can earn more than a Junior Legal Officer, State Counsel, Parliamentary Counsel and State Solicitor in an advanced country like Trinidad & Tobago, it confirms the medieval degeneracy Guyana practices. The same applies to the Attorney-at-Law from OP with less than two years since graduation commanding a salary of $489,666 per month.

We have a situation of barefaced entitlement where those holding onto power see nothing wrong in fleecing this country by paying themselves handsomely while pensioners earn a measly $10,000 per month. If these figures do not represent a brazenly debauched act of enrichment from the public purse of an economically crippled country, what does? Has the opposition verified these salaries? Have they asked for proof that these salaries are as stated by the PPP? Because I don’t trust the PPP and who knows whether they have reduced these numbers to minimize the outrageousness of their enrichment. Furthermore, are these salaries before any gratuities, vacation pay and other perks? With Ashni Singh admitting that over 180 OP staff now out of work because of the budget cuts, who cares when this kind of money is being paid to people to be grossly incompetent? We are now witness to political patronage gone wild. The PPP has created a welfare system to benefit freeloading party members, friends and cronies. Did the PPP impose a crippling 16% VAT on poor people in this country to transfer this astounding kind of wealth to a few party elites? This is a downright travesty that the people of Guyana must condemn. They did not hand their taxes over for this kind of fattening while they suffer.

M. Maxwell