…but not a dollar to workers

Well, “mouth open and story jump out”. And what a story!! After cussing out the PPP for being “greedy and avaricious” (which description we’ll stick to since this is a family newspaper!) here we have the APNU/AFC Government behaving as if the Consolidated Fund is their private feeding trough.

After promising a “significant” salary increase for the wretched of the earth – that’s how the public servants, Police, Nurses, etc, were described during the campaign – they got wood. Hard wood. What else do you call a five per cent increase that’s cut by half because it only kicked in from July? An insult? Larwah? But the President did take the time to explain why his Government was so piddling: the coffers and the cupboards were bare – raped by the aforesaid “greedy and avaricious “ PPP.

Fair enough. A lot of their supporters – which included almost of all of the abovementioned workers who’d been hoping to get raises – put up a stoic face and took it in stride. They would gird up their loins and become real Public SERVANTS – to serve the public better than they had over the last 23 years. Then suddenly this newspaper broke the news – the Ministers and Vice Presidents and MP’s would all be getting massive salary increases!!

After some stout denials, the Finance Minister sheepishly allowed as to how there might be a salary “adjustment” – but not as large as what the Times was trumpeting. And then the President weighed in. The jump in salaries in the millions wasn’t an “increase” but an adjustment because it was just done to “rationalise” the pay scales in the Government. Ever since that Chancellor had demanded his old salary when Burnham wanted him to be Attorney General (Burnham made offers you couldn’t refuse) the salary scales had been screwed up.

It would appear the members of the Government, like Nagamootoo, protested vehemently at the “adjustment” but the President would have none of it. So here you had it now being made official – by sneaking it through the “Official Gazette, which about two or three persons normally read in Guyana. And the numbers are as astronomical as what the Times had revealed.

So your Eyewitness is waiting with bated breath to hear the reaction of those stoic Government workers who’d shown such admirable restraint when they learnt they’d been shafted. For instance, now that Lincoln Lewis, that fearless champion of all working stiffs, has a column in the state newspaper, will he be calling for a repetition of 1999?

Or will he grin and bear it?

…but none for pensioners

Now, if the big ones in the Government didn’t think squat about the public servants who are presumably able-bodied and can fend for themselves since they’re all under 55 (excepting their fearless leader Yarde, of course) couldn’t they at least worry that pensioners might “put their mouth on them”?

Here it is, they gave the old folks a $4000 increase (they said “increase” not “adjustment&rdquo but took it back in spades when they removed the subsidies from their water and electricity bills. And now they can “adjust” their salaries by millions? If their adjustment was to remove the temptation to “thief”, did they even think that the removal of the electricity and water subsidies will ensure our old folks now turn to thiefing?

This Eyewitness asks the Government to rethink this cold act. Old folks should be thinking as to how to navigate their way through the Pearly Gates and not how to bypass meters.

Don’t corrupt our old people.

…but no award for the Mook

The Mook pumped millions into ***OP (Funding a United Candidacy for an Opposition Presidency). But alas he didn’t even get an award for dog catcher!

Was so mad his MuckrakerKN didn’t even cover the award ceremony. Sore loser!