Pay hike for MPs - To get 20 per cent wage increase
published:
Wednesday | December 19, 2007
Earl Moxam, Senior Gleaner Writer
Audley Shaw
Parliamentarians will receive a 20 per cent increase in salary early next year. This has been confirmed by Finance Minister Audley Shaw.
Accordingly, $96 million has been included in the First Supplementary Estimates, approved yesterday by the House of Representatives.
Mr. Shaw told the Standing Finance Committee of Parliament yesterday that the long delayed payout to MPs would take place in the final quarter of the fiscal year, starting in January.
The pay hike for Members of Parliament became due last year for the 2006/2007 to the 2007/08 contract period, but was not taken up due to a lack of consensus between the last Government and the then Opposition Jamaica Labour Party on when it should be disbursed. Then-Opposition Leader Bruce Golding insisted at the time that his members would not accept the pay increase as long as salary negotiations with any public sector group remained incomplete.
Even after the public sector salary settlements were completed, however, the money due to parliamentarians remained untouched, as the last government refused to proceed without the explicit support of the Opposition. During the review of the budget at a meeting of the Standing Finance Committee in April the issue was raised, with Mike Henry, MP for Central Clarendon, a Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) member, demanding his increase, much to the discomfort of some of his Opposition colleagues.
A principled stance
Mr. Shaw defended the stance taken then by his party in Opposition, saying it was a principled stance which was no longer necessary once the public sector payouts had been completed.
"For whatever reason, the previous government did not take the action. It is an action that cannot be allowed to sit anymore and so I have taken the decision as minister of finance to discharge that responsibility," he asserted.
Mr. Shaw was responding to a claim by Opposition Member Roger Clarke that it was the JLP, while in Opposition, that had blocked the disbursement of the increase.
In 2003, the Parliamentary Salaries Review Committee recommended the establishment of a permanent body to review rates of compensation for parliamentarians and to lobby for other improvements in emoluments and conditions of service for legislators.
The Oliver Clarke-chaired committee argued that this would avoid the perennial problems associated with pay hikes for parliamentarians.
