The “utterly disgraceful” salary increases given to Presidents and Ministers under the past Administration were not enough to satisfy the appetite of the coalition Government, which clandestinely awarded its Ministers an exorbitant 50 per cent salary just after several months in office.
That was the People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) response to the outcry by Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo over the salary increases given to the Ministers andPresidents between the periods 1998 to 2014.
A publicity gimmick was executed by the coalition Government in the National Assembly on Monday when an A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) backbencher Jermaine Figueira was asked prepared questions to Finance Minister Winston Jordan in relation to salary increases under the PPP Administration.
In a subsequent statement, Nagamootoo said the increases which amounted to a total of 220.5 per cent for Ministers and 386.5 per cent for Presidents over 17 years were “unconscionable and utterly disgraceful”.
But the PPP pointed out that those accumulated increases were never done in any veiled or clandestine manner unlike what was done in the case of the coalition Government which tried to cover up their lavish and unjustifiable increases.
The Party noted that its increases over the years were always announced prior to their implementation and when they were implemented, the public was duly informed as soon as possible thereafter. The PPP recalled too there was never any public hue and cry about these increases.
“We note the Prime Minister seizing this opportunity for cheap publicity, as is his wont, and characteristically, without thinking, describing these increases as
