The State and Other Employees Federation (SOEF) deplores the fact that the government has not kept its promise to implement the Pay Research Bureau (PRB) report from January 2020.
Meeting the press on Thursday at the federation’s headquarters in Port Louis, SOEF President Radhakrishna Sadien said the government had promised that the report would be implemented from January 2021 and not from January 2021. The government should not use Covid-19 as an excuse not to implement the report from January 2020 as it has spent as much as Rs 80 billion as support to businesses and employees.
The Federation President called on the government to take a policy decision to implement the report from January 2020. He also deplored the fact that a comparison was made between the salary of a permanent secretary and that of a junior civil servant to justify a reduction in the salary gap. According to him, the comparison should have been made between a small civil servant and a Senior Chief Executive, who earns a salary of Rs 150,000 compared to a permanent secretary, who earns a salary of Rs 120,000 per month. He stressed that it was unacceptable to use the Covid-19 as an excuse to break an election promise. He said he appreciated, however, that the PRB report was published this year. He also had to state that the minimum wage in the public service should have been corrected when the concept was introduced.
Narendranath Gopee : The PM has been misled
Narendranath Gopee is adamant. Contrarily to what has been said, namely by the Prime Minister, those at the bottom of the scale will not get a 10% increase in the salaries. According to him, Pravind Jugnauth may have been misled. As per the President of the Federation of Civil Service Unions, the latter should have avoided going into the technical aspect of the report.
The PRB report should have been implemented from January 2020 according to Vinod Seegum
This is the first reaction of Vinod Seegum, president of All Civil Service Employees Federation. The recommendations of the Pay Research Bureau’s report will be implemented retroactively from January 2021. However, for Vinod Seegum, it should have been January 2020. The trade unionist says he is disappointed with several aspects of the report, including the date of implementation of the recommendations.
Hurdoyal insists on the retroactive aspect
The Minister for Civil Service is happy. Vikram Hurdoyal was attending a ceremony of handing over of the Pay Research Bureau report to trade unionists this afternoon. Facing the press, he insisted on the fact that the PRB recommendations will be implemented retroactively.
He added that civil servants will receive the first payment, i.e. their dues since January 2021, in November. Despite the difficult economic environment, he said, the government has made an effort to implement the report in one fell swoop.
He said he hope trade unionists would appreciate most of the report’s recommendations, especially the concept of retroactivity.
