Imbert: Government will need parliamentary approval for backpay

For­mer Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says the Gov­ern­ment will need to re­turn to Par­lia­ment for ad­di­tion­al fund­ing if it in­tends to meet the Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion’s re­quest to have back­pay, stem­ming from the still-to-be-ne­go­ti­at­ed “10 per cent” wage in­crease, paid by Christ­mas.

While the PSA has de­clared it has re­ceived a “10 per cent” of­fer from the deputy Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) last Fri­day, Guardian Me­dia has been re­li­ably in­formed that what was pre­sent­ed to PSA Pres­i­dent Fe­l­isha Thomas was an in­ten­tion to com­mence ne­go­ti­a­tions at 10 per cent and not a for­mal of­fer.

Guardian Me­dia has not been able to reach Thomas for a com­ment for sev­er­al days.

Thomas has made an am­bi­tious promise to pub­lic ser­vants to sort out ne­go­ti­a­tions in time for them to re­ceive their mon­ey by Christ­mas.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) me­dia brief­ing, Im­bert did not want to com­ment on the fea­si­bil­i­ty of the time­line giv­en by Thomas, but said the gov­ern­ment will have to come to Par­lia­ment for the ad­di­tion­al funds to cov­er the back­pay.

“There is no bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion in the 2026 ap­pro­pri­a­tion for the pay­ment of the in­crease or the pay­ment of back pay. So, if it is to be paid, the gov­ern­ment will have to come to the Par­lia­ment to in­crease the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion for 2026,” he said.

Im­bert, how­ev­er, added that the gov­ern­ment could al­so do some­thing that is “dan­ger­ous.”

“Now, they could do some­thing un­usu­al, some might even say ir­reg­u­lar, and use mon­ey al­lo­cat­ed for some­thing else to pay it. But that would be quite dan­ger­ous. Be­cause if they do that, then they would have to re­plen­ish wher­ev­er they got that mon­ey from, and they would have to come to the Par­lia­ment and do a sec­ond bud­get for 2026. So, if it is to be paid, there has to be a sec­ond bud­get for 2026.”

Dur­ing a meet­ing of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee (SFC), Tan­coo re­vealed that no mon­ey was al­lo­cat­ed for the set­tle­ment of the pub­lic ser­vants’ salary pay­ments be­cause ne­go­ti­a­tions were not com­plet­ed.

Tan­coo said, “There have been no ne­go­ti­a­tions start­ed, so the as­sump­tion of ten, twelve, ze­ro, or five per cent is ir­rel­e­vant. Your ver­sion of ac­count­ing might be dif­fer­ent, but as a gov­ern­ment, we have to wait un­til ne­go­ti­a­tions be­gin be­fore putting ar­bi­trary fig­ures.”

He re­cent­ly said the gov­ern­ment has the funds to ho­n­our the com­mit­ment it made to the PSA dur­ing the lead-up to the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tions.

The ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­ods for the PSA are 2014-2016 and 2017-2019. If a 10 per cent of­fer is ac­cept­ed, then it would be spread amongst those two pe­ri­ods, mean­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of 5 per cent for each ne­go­ti­at­ing pe­ri­od.

How­ev­er, mem­bers of the PNM are ques­tion­ing if this ma­jor UNC cam­paign promise will ma­te­ri­alise.

For­mer Cul­ture Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell al­tered a UNC so­cial me­dia AI-gen­er­at­ed post show­ing peo­ple cel­e­brat­ing with the cap­tion “Promise Kept! Salary In­crease for pub­lic ser­vants.” Mitchell in­stead changed the text to “Promise Al­most Kept. Salary Of­fer of an Of­fer sent.”

Com­ment­ing on the sto­ry on so­cial me­dia, For­mer Tu­na­puna MP Es­mond Forde wrote, “Christ­mas 2025 is 30 days away.”

And San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning shared Guardian Me­dia’s sto­ry on the dis­pute of the 10 per cent of­fer with the cap­tion, “Dar­ling Fe­l­isha, stop the lies! Re­sign now!”

And Diego Mar­tin May­or Ake­li­ah Glas­gow-Warn­er al­so com­ment­ed on Face­book, say­ing, “I feel sor­ry for PSA mem­bers, to be hon­est. This young la­dy (Thomas) is dis­hon­est and way in over her head. She had so many op­por­tu­ni­ties to be hon­est with her mem­ber­ship.”