Skip to main content

FM
Former Member
The former presidents’ benefits package is vulgar when compared to $7,500 per month for pensioners
By STABROEK STAFF | LETTERS | FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2011

Dear Editor,

In reading about the Former Presidents (Benefits and Other Facilities) Act No 12, 2009, as presented by Alissa Trotz in the Diaspora column under the caption: ‘The distance between government and the governed: Another look at pensions in Guyana‘ (SN, July 18), reminded me of an Anancy Story in which Brer Anancy named himself ‘All of you‘ so that every time the servant brought the various foods on a platter and placed it on the table which Anancy and the other animals sat around, saying “this is for all of you,“ Anancy smiled and took it all for himself while explaining to the animals that treating him in this special way was an expression of love and appreciation. Thus all the animals were left hungry as he glutted himself. Dr Trotz wrote about this lavish benefit package which the ordinary man in the street hardly knows anything about, and explained the entitlements which are guaranteed to President Bharrat Jagdeo during the remainder of his life after he demits office. We learned also that even if he takes another job in a governmental position, it will not affect his pension package.

There is need here Editor to reproduce part of this benefit package that Dr Trotz highlighted for the sake of those who missed it: “A tax-free pension, free medical treatment for him and dependent members of his family for the rest of his life, an unspecified number of vehicles to be maintained at the taxpayers’ expense, an annual vacation allowance equivalent to the cost of two first class return fares, full time personal security and security at his place of residence, payment of services for an unspecified number of personal and household staff, payment for the services of an ‘attendant‘ and a gardener, payment for services of an unspecified number of clerical staff, payment for services of ‘technical‘ staff, payment of his water rates, payment of his electricity bill, payment of his telephone bills, and toll free road transportation in Guyana.“

Now this is not the story of the king in his magic suit; this is fuh real, a golden benefit package that all can see. For me this “Benefit Package” is insulting and vulgar, and with the present pension rate at the starvation level of $7,500.00, it is a most disturbing scenario. “Obscene” indeed, when a pensioner today gets just about $250 per day and a loaf of bread cost $260! I have no idea what the President’s take-home pay and allowances are, but I’m sure he doesn’t have to spend one cent of it. Now I can understand Dr Roger Luncheon‘s position on this matter in which he was reported as saying that the benefit package was “minimal”; even government ministers who hear no wrong, see no wrong, period! I can overlook this, but what of opposition parliamentarians? What thoughts pass through their minds when this golden benefit package is placed alongside that of pensioners – $7,500 per month? When this Bill was read to them did it send them into a state of mental paralysis?

The breakdown in income and spending for two pensioners shows up the unconscionable and preposterous existing state of affairs. From $15,000 a couple must perform a miracle to take care of basics: food, transportation, medical expenses, electricity and the phone bill that adds up to approximately $55-$60,000 per month. What then does a $162 billon budget matter to the poor who are left to starve on a pittance? The situation could not be further from, “government, has an obligation to ensure the needs of its citizen are catered for”; “there could be no development if the state of the poor remains the same.“ I’m in full agreement with Dr Trotz saying that politicians should be confronted and asked to explain their silence on this eyepass, giving former presidents a blank cheque in an immoral benefit act while pensioners must subsist on next to nothing.

Brazen as this whole golden lifetime package is, maybe, just maybe it could have been glossed over if there was more consideration for older folks, who having made their contribution and who are now sailing into their twilight were treated with more decency. For me the main hurdle that I think we will have to get over is the enactment of laws and institution of policies which protect the elite class and allow them to have it all their way, in every-which-way. Alissa Trotz deserves to be commended for highlighting this obnoxious act that our opposition parliamentarians avoided. It makes me ponder on the reason; the advantages/disadvantages; the difference between being frank and bold from abroad and at home. As Forbes Burnham was fond of saying: “Don’t stay abroad and cuss me come home.“

Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe

Source
GTC pensioners maintain call for more money
Written by Kwesi Isles Friday, 09 September 2011 12:34


The GTC pensioners marched on Labour Day 2011

Former employees of the Guyana Telecommunications Corporation (GTC), now GT&T, on Friday called on the government to renegotiate the pensions that have been offered to them following their departure from the once wholly state-owned entity. GTC was in 1991 privatised with government retaining 20 percent ownership and workers were told that there years of service would have been transferred to the new company.

At a news conference called by the Guyana Postal and Telecommunications Workers Union (GPTWU), one-time GTC Personnel and Labour Relations Manager Clifford Blackett stated that the majority of the roughly 46 persons still affected are highly trained individuals who are now being offered the minimum pension. “Nowhere did we recognise that when our time would have come to depart the now GT&T that our pension with the Ministry of Finance would have been relegated to the minimum pension, a pension that given to the lowest categories of workers … cleaners and watchmen et cetera,” Blackett stated. “Among us are managers, deputy managers and well-qualified engineers who would have spent years studying locally and abroad to hold the positions that they held with GTC and to give this country a satisfactory service.”

Blackett said they are dissatisfied with the amount they receive when many of their colleagues in the public service are receiving as much as “five times’’ that amount. He indicated to reporters that they are currently receiving GUY$16,000 per month and that he believed that figure should be at least GUY$50,000 per month. In 2004 the government drafted a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to address the former GTC employees’ issues but not every detail was up to the workers’ liking. “Had we accepted carte blanche the Memorandum of Understanding we would have left a whole lot of people dissatisfied. All that we’ve been asking of this government is to look in to some reasonable and justifiable pension that is commensurate with our colleagues in public service employment,” Blackett said.

According to the former manager, there was some GUY$500M in GTC’s coffers at the time of the privatisation from which a reasonable pension fund could have been derived. He noted that the former entity had always paid pensions from the funds it held and not through the finance ministry.
“If people were not wantonly greedy that money could have gone to our pension fund. There were talks for GT&T to take over our services entirely and they said that to take over 10 years service it would cost about GUY$400-500M and to take over services 15 years and over would cost about GUY$600M plus,” he said.

Blackett noted that according to the Pension Act, once an individual would have given 33 years service they would not receive less than two-thirds of their pensionable emoluments which would calculated on the average of their annual salary. “Hence we are in a dilemma and the cost of living today is so high and the value of money is so low that commensurate with our status and standards of living we are demanding that this matter be properly addressed and that we be able to get from the authorities concerned our true pensionable benefits,” he declared.

Meanwhile, GPTWU President Harold Shepherd noted that most of the ex-employees have not received their gratuities. Pointing to the 2004 MOU he said the document called for them to sign off on an agreement that would have seen most of the employees receiving the minimum pension and gratuity from 2004. Shepherd added that over the last few years the union has met President Bharrat Jagdeo and has even written to him several times this year without receiving any response. He said the letters stated that the union was in partial agreement with the MOU and was open to discussion on the outstanding areas of concern.

When questioned about the options available to the union should the government fail to deal the GPTWU president said they hope that good sense would prevail. “We’re hoping that we would not have to take that road. I believe that these former employees as senior citizens of this country would have given their best to bring this economy to the state that it is presently at; that good sense would prevail and that the government would not force them to take further industrial action,” Shepherd said.

Cabinet Secretary, Dr. Roger Luncheon has been reported as saying that the Office of the President and the Privatisation Unit are working on models that would see the retirees taking home more than the minimum pension. “Definitely, something that is better than what they actually would have earned if the pension and the superannuation benefits they do receive today reflect solely what their remunerations were in 1990-91,” he said earlier this year. He explained that the pensioners would be made from the coffers of the Privatisation Unit/National Industrial Commercial Investments Limited and not from the GUY$500-700 million reserve fund out of which GTC had paid its pensioners. However, no timeline has been set on the resolution of the matter.

Source
FM

Add Reply

×
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×
×