From left, Davies, Nelson, Jackson, Morrison, and Witter.
Omar Anderson, Gleaner Writer
A 16-MEMBER Monitoring and Evaluating Committee, including trade unions, Government, university and civil service representatives, has been named to police adherence to the terms of the recently-signed Memorandum of Under-standing (MoU) between the Government and major trade unions.
The committee is to meet early this week in wake of the announcements made by Finance Minister, Dr. Omar Davies, at the opening of the Budget debate last week, The Sunday Gleaner understands.
Senator Dwight Nelson, vice-president of the Joint Confederation of Trade Unions (JCTU), said yesterday that the Monitoring and Evaluating Committee was formed two weeks ago. But it is to convene its first meeting this week to see the extent to which the terms of the MoU have been adhered to.
"Now that the Finance Minister has made his budget presentation, we are hoping to meet early this week," Mr. Nelson said.
He said the trade union representatives on the committee are himself, Lambert Brown, first vice-president of the University and Allied Workers' Union (UAWU); Wayne Jones, president of the Jamaica Civil Service Association (JCSA); Valdo Lawrence-Campbell, president of the Nursing Association of Jamaica (NAJ); Helene Davis-White, general secretary of the Jamaica Association of Local Government Officers (JALGO); vice-president of the National Workers' Union (NWU) Vincent Morrison; Jamaica Teachers' Association (JTA) President Wentworth Gabbidon, and Keith Comrie, president of the Union of Schools, Agricultural and Allied Workers (USAAW).
REPRESENTATIVES
The university representatives are Dr. Michael Witter, senior lecturer and head of the Department of Economics at the University of the West Indies (UWI), economist and lecturer Dr. Dillon Alleyne also from the UWI Department of Economics. Government members are Finance and Planning Minister, Dr. Omar Davies; Minister of Labour and Social Security, Horace Dalley; State Minister in the Ministry of Finance and Planning Fitz Jackson; Financial Secretary Shirley Tyndall; Solicitor-General Michael Hylton, and economist Dennis Morrison from the Office of the Prime Minister. Yesterday, Mr. Nelson, the chief union architect behind the MoU, told The Sunday Gleaner that although the inflation rate is about 14 per cent, there should be no cause for much worry, as the Government in the MoU had targeted an inflation rate of between eight per cent and nine per cent for financial year 2004/2005 and between six per cent and seven per cent for financial year 2005/2006.
"I don't think there should be any cause for alarm," he said. "The fact that the Finance Minister is not imposing any new taxes is a significant decision on the part of the Government as far as the MoU is concerned."
To this end, Mr. Nelson said the JCTU was depending heavily on the Monitoring and Evaluating Committee to constantly police the movements of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which measures inflation.
ECONOMICS DATA
"We will be monitoring economics data on a month by month basis," Mr. Nelson told The Sunday Gleaner. "We won't wait until the end of 2005 to look at what the inflation rate will be then react to it."
In February, the Government and the JCTU signed an historic agreement that will see the unions restraining their demands for higher salaries for public sector workers, while the Government at the same would not cut some 15,000 public sector jobs. The MoU is also expected to control the country's ballooning wage bill which stood at over $45 billion for the April-December period, $4 billion above budget and combat the current economic crisis. Meanwhile, commenting on the mix of expertise on the committee, Mr. Nelson said the Government representatives bring to the table a level of technical expertise as well as legal authority.
"The trade union team is also a very good blend of trade union expertise and economic skills which are very important," he said. "They (economists) will be able to help trade unionists interpret economic data."
