It does not take the work of a genius to forecast that coming on the heels of the protest demonstrations by the opposition PNCR, that the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) would have come out of hibernation, and in the only way known to that union’s leaders is making yet another unscrupulous and impractical demand for a 25-percent salary hike for Public Servants.

While Guyanese acknowledge that the world food situation has impacted on the people in every country, the Guyana government has from day one of rising food prices, been making steady interventions and putting appropriate and costly measures in place to cushion rising prices, which have already cost the economy billions of dollars.

The people are saying that this salary-hike call by the union is one with dishonest intentions, made to appease the Piper and adds to the witch’s potion of evil intentions. Indeed most Guyanese see this demand by the union as the icing on the PNCR political cake.

The people recall only too well, when under successive previous PNC governments, the same GPSU had relegated itself to a “toothless poodle”. It was in those days, salaries and wages in every sector were stagnated and no one, including this very GPSU had the gumption to make demands for rise in salaries and wages. This was the state of affairs in Guyana prior to 1992 when the government minimum wage had ground to a halt at between $10,000 and $13,000 per month.

The people also recall the May Day rally of 1979 when late President Forbes Burnham asked workers at a TUC really whether they wanted $14.00 per day minimum wage or hydro-electricity. That was one of many bubbles that burst in thin air as neither of the two materialised. While the country’s infrastructure was in a state of virtual disrepair because of PNC neglect, social services were almost non-existent, and the small man was indeed biting the dust.

This starvation wage was aggravated by the fact of large–scale banning and skyrocketing prices of food items and shortages. Those were the days, and some of us choose to forget, when the Guyanese people were told by the powers that be, that they either give in, or ship out.

And out it was for hundreds of Guyanese, including former President of the GPSU George Daniels, who, for fear for his life, fled Guyana in search for better pastures because of hunger and despotic rule under the PNC.

But not so now. Since 1992 when the PPP/C was democratically elected to power things have changed dramatically and respectability was brought back to Guyana and its people.

Every year since the PPP/C came to power, public sector workers have been getting increases in wages and salaries.

And it must be recalled that this very government honoured an impossible award of over 30 percent increase in salaries by the Aubrey Armstrong Tribunal. Up to the beginning of this year, public sector workers were recipients of a 9-percent pay hike.

Over the years, the country’s teachers, nurses, police and soldiers were also given special increases. On top of this, on Wednesday last President Bharrat Jagdeo announced a further five-percent salary hike for public servants, a temporary $4,000 non-taxable payment per month for those earning under $50,000 monthly, and an initiative to keep bread prices from rising.

The people agree with the President when he said: “when one examines the $4,000 tax-free allowance and adds it on to the five-percent across-the-board increase, the figure is quite substantive”.

“…If you look at what $4,000 tax free is to a person earning $30,000 a month, that is over 15 percent and plus the five- percent salary increase, that is 20 percent at the bottom”.

The people also note that apart from all these new measures, the government had zero-rated a long list of essential food items, reduced the excise tax on gasoline from 50 percent in 2007 to 17 percent at the moment, zero rated diesel oil and absorbed increases on flour and flour products.

The people know that the government has done a tremendous lot to help in these difficult times, and see the GPSU demand for a 25-percent hike in salaries as unrealistic, mischievous and politically motivated.