While Government warns that many public servants could be put on the breadline if it scraps the controversial tax measures announced in last month’s budget, the National Union of Public Workers (NUPW) remains adamant that it will take industrial action in protest of the levies.
President of the island’s largest public sector union Akanni McDowall insisted that the hike in the National Social Responsibility Levy, on the excise tax of diesel and gas and on foreign exchange transactions would only lead to a heavier burden already being placed on the strained backs of public service employees, who have not received an increase in pay in almost a decade.
He insisted that Government either recall the tax or introduce a “coping subsidy” for public servants until salary negotiations have ended.
“The Minister of finance is seeking to connect the issue of sending home the servants with that of public servants getting salary increases. Now to my mind the two issues are not connected. You are talking on one hand about entitlement, and on the other hand you are talking about reducing expenditure, so public servants are entitled to a salary increase after not having one for close to a decade,” he said.
In addition, McDowall pointed to the recent Central Bank’s report, noting that government’s expenditure on wages and salaries had dropped by $100 million since 2013 and therefore dismissed the statement by the administration that paying public servant’s salaries was the major area racking up public debt.
“Now if you want to sit and discuss with the union how we can reduce expenditure then we can do that, we can sit and discuss expenditure across the board. When you are talking about expenditure, it cannot only be related to the public service but about reducing expenditure across the government service,” he stressed, while on a radio program yesterday.
Saying he had been misrepresented in another section of the press which on Sunday carried a story warning government to recall the taxes or face the membership of the union hitting the streets in protest, McDowall did not knock the possibility of a march, but said that there were other steps that could be taken before industrial action reached that stage.