00:00With the Chief Personnel Officer and the NUGFW signing off on a 10% increase for daily rated workers,
00:09the Finance Minister has to find over a billion dollars to meet the cash delivery of the overall 2.6
00:16billion dollar commitment.
00:18The total value of this settlement is 2.6 billion dollars.
00:22What is going to occur is that part of the agreement has cash payment for arrays and non-cash payment
00:30for arrays.
00:30The cash payment is approximately 40% of the arrays.
00:34The value of that is 1 billion TT.
00:37The non-cash is 1.56 billion TT.
00:40This was not budgeted for in the last budget, current budget.
00:44And therefore the Honourable Minister of Finance will be looking to find monies for the new salaries in the media
00:50review.
00:50We do expect the new salaries to come on June or July of this year.
00:55And we expect the first tranche of the arrays to be paid in this calendar year.
01:00And let me just qualify what I mean by that.
01:02The government is taking a very responsible approach to spread out the payment of cash arrays over multiple financial years.
01:10The first tranche will be paid in this calendar year.
01:12It could occur at media review, but it could happen in December.
01:16The idea is to be paid during this calendar year.
01:19The first tranche is expected to cost $500 million.
01:24The CPO says the details of the non-cash payment remain to be finalized via a stakeholder engagement process.
01:33The non-cash item includes issues concerning offsetting a raise to income tax, AGC mortgage payments, getting vehicle loans, exemptions
01:43for taxes and so on.
01:45So a complete process, comprehensive process must be engaged with all those stakeholders so we can develop the processes for
01:52which persons can access and administrate the non-cash item.
01:55Roughly 20,000 daily rated government workers will benefit from the settlement, which the CPO notes amounts to a 17
02:04% increase.
02:06We expect the new salaries to come on effect June of July of this year.
02:11For both triennials, COLA was consolidated on two occasions.
02:14So when you consolidate COLA into salary, the net effect is the salary increases.
02:19So while it's a 10% offer, the COLA has an effect on that.
02:23So in a sense, it's really a 17% increase on average from the existing salary in 2013 to the
02:30current salary that we will have in 2019.
02:33The breakdown is 1% for the years 2014 to 2018 and 5% for 2019.
02:41The CPO also had good news for the retirees.
02:44We also agreed that for retirees, that retirees will get 100% of their cash in arrays for the years
02:522014 to 2018.
02:54And I must also credit Mr. Street for that.
02:56It's his one who brought that to the table and we were able to successfully negotiate that.
03:01Where retirees will get 100% of their arrays for the years between 2014 and 2018.
03:07That's critically important.
03:09Renasa Katain, TV6 News.
03:15Renasa Katain, TV6 News.
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