No provisions have been made for the payment of the proposed 10% salary increase for public servants, at least not for fiscal 2026. The confirmation came directly from the Minister of Finance, on the first day of the Standing Finance Committee. Rynessa Cutting has more.
00:00Confirmation from Finance Minister Devension of Tanku today that Budget 2026 does not include allocations or estimates for the much-anticipated 10% wage increase to public servants.
00:13The proposed salary increase that you are referring to, I assume, is the PSA negotiation that is due to start?
00:21Is that the salary negotiation that you are referring to?
00:23Yes, I am.
00:24With the greatest respect, during the budget debate, I indicated that negotiations hasn't started yet.
00:28So, therefore, that is not included.
00:31We cannot include, unlike the PNM before, we cannot include in absentia something that has not happened yet.
00:40However, the opposition insisted that given the government's commitment to delivering on this promise,
00:46it could have and should have budgeted an estimated figure to settle the negotiations, to which the minister had this to say.
00:53There has been no negotiations started, so the assumption that there's a 10%, 12%, 0%, 5%, whatever your assumption is, is irrelevant at this point.
01:04We have to wait, and your version of accounting might be different, but we have to wait as a government until there is a negotiation started,
01:13before we preempt and put some arbitrary figure in the numbers. That is common sense.
01:17Attempts to define a timeline for the settlement of the negotiations also proved futile.
01:23So, I am asking, on the piggyback of that, does the Minister of Finance expect these wage negotiations to be completed before the end of the fiscal year?
01:32It's a simple question.
01:34Minister, sorry, member, this has been asked and answered very, very clearly already.
01:44There is no negotiation now. We are dealing with figures in front of you.
01:48Please focus on the documents that are in front of you.
01:51The comments came during the Standing Finance Committee's deliberation of expenditure for the Ministry of the People,
01:57during which it was also revealed that no allocation has been set aside for the expected increase in NIS contributions,
02:05effective January next year.
02:07Was this allocation made in contemplation of the increase in the NIS payments,
02:12which you confirmed are paid from this line item for 140 workers?
02:19The opposition continued on its quest to prove that the government had understated expenditures in the 2026 budget
02:35by questioning how the ministry intends to pay the workers for positions currently advertised as vacant
02:42through the government's national recruitment drive.
02:46A fund called the Employment Fund was created at the Ministry of Finance,
02:52to which an allocation has been made.
02:55That allocation is for the funding of employment generally.
02:59So I'm assuming that should there be need, we can draw from that fund for this purpose,
03:06or any other employment purpose under the government.
03:10So I'm clarifying then that the over 600 persons being advertised here,
03:16as well as if there are other vacancies, because it's 20,000,
03:19those persons are going to be paid out of the unemployment fund
03:22and not from the line items in the different ministries.
03:24That's not what I said.
03:26But please go ahead.
03:27If sufficient, if there is need for additional support for employment creation specifically,
03:35there is a fund that has been created for that purpose.
03:38As of midday Monday, over 30,000 people had applied for jobs.
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