Dear Editor,
I have been quietly observing the standoff over the recent increases granted to senior government officials, and it seems as though this will probably go into the next election if the provocateurs aren’t brought around to the idea that there are much more productive ventures which can benefit from their energies. I have read enough of the complaints against the salary increases, and while there is merit at the subjective level, they are, in the larger context of the nation’s objectives, misplaced.
As a matter of fact, the increase in salaries of senior government officials is exactly what is needed at this point in time, and I may go so far as to say that the final actual salaries are decent compared with what individuals in public office and within the private sector are earning in other countries. Based on information available in the press, the following table was drawn up to show the monthly salaries of the various categories of government officials and their US dollar equivalent. As I have said, they are really not worth the noise being generated.
The salary increases are a strategic attempt to address the potential issue of corruption of our government officials in the future, something which has been responsible for the demise of the previous government, among other things.
The public sector has borne the brunt of the economic structural adjustments of the early 1990’s, and the pain of these adjustments is still being felt. This matter cannot be properly resolved by simply granting 50% or 100% increases across the board to public servants, as such increases will fuel inflation, which will eat away at the majority or all of the increase, resulting in zero real income growth.
Many economists locally know fully well that the solution to delivering better wages for public servants is best handled by pushing for rapid investment and economic growth which will lead to higher paying jobs being created in the private sector first. This pull in higher wages from the private sector will ultimately be one reason for the government to increase salaries, with the other being that cumulative investment and economic growth will lead to higher tax revenues which will facilitate government paying higher salaries.
This must be accompanied by high export growth which leads to a stronger international reserve position which in turn leads to exchange rate stability, thereby lending greater confidence in our economy.
As an alternative to this subject, I wish to propose a number of ideas for moving Guyana forward, and these I’d like to share for us to deliberate upon and get on with building a life of larger incomes and stable families for ourselves.
I have already highlighted the already observed fact that Guyana desperately needs to secure massive amounts of cheaper electricity to transform our economy into a higher income-earning value-added type economy. While wind energy can be more quickly accessed, the fact is that this power supply does not come with a 24 hour guarantee, but will at the very least go quite some was towards reducing import costs associated with purchasing fuel for GPL. Hydropower of the quantum desired, in excess of 500MW and closer to 2,000MW seems to be somewhere over the horizon for at least a decade or so, unless a source can easily be identified with a feasible cost structure, but this is at least a starting point.
Before moving off of cheap electricity, I recently asked a few persons about Guyana establishing its own nuclear power facility. The immediate knee-jerk response was the absence of available technology to get this off the ground. I am sure that I am not the only person who might have wandered upon this idea, but I would like to suggest that we make it a priority and seek measures of both importing this technology and developing it right at the University of Guyana. At some point Guyanese will very likely benefit from nuclear power. The question is, why do we have to wait until the next fifty years?
The opportunities and benefits of cheap electricity are enormous, with the potential of an aluminum smelting plant being set up to produce our own aluminum for export, in addition to being an incentive to other foreign manufacturers using aluminum to establish their own facilities right here in Guyana.
The private sector, senior government functionaries, the Opposition and the wider population need to recognize that we must shed the old ideas of our traditional politics and embrace new concepts and visions of our future which can be fully furnished by just observing the fast evolving fortunes and realities of the advanced and emerging economies which have committed to political stability, economic prosperity and the delivery of quality goods and services in a globally competitive environment. This is our future. We only need to take a hold of it and make it our own.
Yours faithfully,
Craig Sylvester
