Dear Editor,
The disinformation spewed by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo in an attempt to throw water to cool down the enraged Public Servants only served to enrage them further and it cannot go unaddressed.
In a Facebook post on the 13th February, 2021 on the page Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, it was stated “The APNU+AFC continues to mislead their supporters and the Guyanese public. The latest episode of this is the false claim that there will be no wages and salary increases in 2021 for public servants. The fact is that over $10B has been budgeted in the estimates under the head, ‘revision of wages and salaries’. A huge part of that sum will go towards salary increases for public sector workers.”
What Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo and so many others in the PPP seems to be forgetting is the fact that we live in an information age and it takes just a few seconds to assert any validity in such statement. You can search high and low, cover to cover and you will not find in any of the three volumes of the estimates any heading as “revision of wages and salaries”. It simply does not exist. And it is a blatant insult to the Guyanese people for such disinformation to be put out by the sitting Vice President.
Further, there is one thing that all Guyanese are certain of, and that is the fact that had there been the tiniest allocation to increase Public Servants wages and salaries, we would have had to endure another hour of Dr. Ashni Singh, and it would have never been kept a secret - as we are being asked to believe today. Dr. Ashni Singh stood for five hours and the only time he uttered the word “revision” was when he spoke about, and I quote “… also through the review and revision of the Mental Health Act…”
To go even further, the word “revision” appears three times in Volume one of the estimates, once in volume two and once in volume three. In this order:
Volume One: Pg 756 “LAW REVISION OFFICER”, Pg 757 “LAW REVISION OFFICER”, “PRINCIPAL ASSISTANT LAW REVISION OFFICER”
Volume Two: Pg 373 “Monitor and review legislations, administrative acts and omissions relating to ethnic relations and equal opportunities and, where necessary submit proposals for the revision of such”
Volume Three: REF 204 “Revision of Technical Vocational curriculum”
The PPP is yet to come to grip with the fact that the uninformed Guyana that they governed prior to 2015 is not the same Guyana today. And today they are held accountable by well-informed Guyanese. So while social media enables their disinformation to be carried, technology plays a vital role in exposing same.
The 2021 budget did not cater for any increase, revision or otherwise, in Public Servants wages and salaries. But the PPP must now find a way to fix such a grave omission in an attempt to salvage their tarnished public image.
Hon. Juretha Fernandes MP, MSc Public Administration, BSc. Economics
President of YFC
Executive member of AFC
