Mike Henry Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
An opposition Member of Parliament broke an apparent code of silence among legislators yesterday when he spoke up and demanded a pay increase.
Mike Henry, MP for Central Clarendon, left no doubt that he was opposed to any further delay in the granting of pay increases to parliamentarians, when he raised the matter in the meeting of the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament.
"Personally speaking, parliamentarians need far more than they are being paid. I spent about $300,000 this weekend burying people and I make no apologies. I should be paid far more than I am being paid," he stated.
Last salary increase
The last salary increase granted to parliamentarians on April 1, 2002, moved the Prime Minister's basic pay up to $4,706,244.00. The Leader of the Opposition's basic salary went up to $3,089,311. The salary of Members of Parliament not in the executive branch of government moved up to $2,206,651.
Parliamentarians' salaries were subsequently frozen, like that of all public sector employees, under the first Public Sector Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). Under the second MoU, for 2006-2008, public sector workers were granted a 15 per cent increase in year one and five per cent in the second year of their two-year pay cycle.
The parliamentary opposition declared during those negotiations that it would not accept a pay rise until paymentsto teachers, nurses and the police had been settled, and that it would not support an increase for MPs that was higher than that granted to the public sector groups.
The committee was reminded of this position by Bruce Golding, the Leader of the Opposition.
But Dr. Omar Davies, the Minister of Finance, accused the Opposition of backing out of an agreed approach to the matter when it appeared to be politically expedient so to do, as a consequence of which, he said, he was not in a position to ask Cabinet to approve the increase.
"It was generally thought that there was a unanimous position until the report (by a bi-partisan parliamentary committee) was presented. The issue therefore is how then do we revive the process to move forward", he said.
The Opposition Leader would have none of it, however, accusing the government of being weak and wanting the opposition to endorse a decision which the Cabinet had authority to make on its own. "You are the government!" he asserted in response to taunts from government MPs.
"What the government wished, in dealing with parliamentary salary, (was) to have the matter raised on the government side, with an assurance that somebody on the opposition side would get up and endorse it. That's not governance!" Mr. Golding countered.
In 2003, a committee, headed by Oliver Clarke, managing director of The Gleaner Company Ltd, made several recommendations to guide parliamentary compensation in the long-term. The committee, among other things, called for the establishment of a Permanent Salaries Committee to "examine and recommend" periodic increases to salary and allowances for parliamentarians, and for the practice of linking the salaries of the parliamentarians and permanent secretaries be discontinued.
