Dear Editor,
Guyana’s public sector monthly minimum wage at the end of 2010 was $33,207 per month or $398,484 per year. That is the equivalent of US$166 per month or US$1992 per year. That amount increased under the PPP from US$24.90 in 1992 to US$1992 today. The private sector minimum wage policy is failed and broken. It causes gross inequality. Despite its claims to working class legitimacy, the PPP has not changed it. After 1992, there has been a steady entrenchment of PPP-ites in the public sector often at the loss, dismissal or forcing out of the PNC-ites. It is a sinful repetition of the similar loathsome PNC’s tactics.
While the fortification of the PPP presence in the public sector after 1992 was significant, the bigger news was the incredible growth in public sector wages since 1992. Most touchingly, the raises for the upper echelon of government were spectacular and contemptible, considering the morass the nation has become since that time. In 2000, minimum wage public sector employees earned US$1234 while the GDP per capita was US$773. Thus, the lowest paid public sector workers were earning US$461 more per year than the per capita GDP in 2000. Fast forward to 2011 and Guyana’s per capita GDP is US$2502 while the public sector monthly minimum wage is US$1992. The lowest paid public sector employee is earning US$510 more per year than the average Guyanese.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. While these government workers are getting paid above the per capita GDP rate, this government that always claims working class legitimacy has allowed a terrible policy that exploits the poor and the powerless of this nation. Private sector employees face lower minimum wages in most sectors compared to public sector employees. Guyana has a farcical system whereby different minimum wages are fixed for different sectors and categories of workers. Some areas are not even covered. To make matters worse, there is scant enforcement so anything goes.
The problem of this dastardly policy of two different minimum wages for public and private sector workers is highlighted by the reality of what has happened since 1992 in this country. Hoyte started the market economy policies. The PPP took it to another scale in 1992. The old socialist state-controlled model folded to the new private enterprise market-oriented model. More left the public sector or were pushed out of it since 1992. Wages in many areas of the growing private sector were low and remain low thanks to the exploitation of the minimum wage dichotomy. The absence of unions helped immensely. Guided by painfully low minimum wage benchmarks, these new owners raked in big profits on the back of cheaper labour. They kept the profits all to themselves. This equation reinforced and continues to reinforce inequality in this country.
The affront continued when the PPP established the nation’s most powerful and efficient tax collection system in this country. Taxes were collected from all, including the same poor and powerless getting a shameless reproach called a minimum wage in the public sector. In order to spend these taxes, the government set up a tendering and contracting system. Many in this country have pointed to this system as the heart of inequality and marginalisation in Guyana. Dozens of billions are handed out every year through this system. Those billions end up in the hands of a few after coming from the all. The beneficiaries of the billions employ the poor and the powerless of this nation. They pay them wages from the billions. They can pay the pauperized of this country scraps because the minimum wage laws encourages the payment of scraps. The billionaires do not have to pay more than the bare minimum for the soul of the broken of this land. It does not matter that these same fortuneless people were squeezed for taxes in order to give the billionaires the contracts in the first place.
There are people earning $5000 per week in this country while multi-millionaires are being made out of the taxes they pay. This is just one example of how inequality continues to damage this nation.
Yours faithfully,
M Maxwell
