CM: VICEROY SALE NO WINDFALL FOR CIVIL SERVANTS

At a press conference on Friday, August 12, Chief Minister and Minister of Finance, Hubert Hughes, was asked to comment on a letter from the Anguilla Civil Service Association (ACSA) requesting the Government to restore salaries to the pre-cut position, now that a substantial windfall was being realised from the Viceroy public auction sale. (See ACSA’s letter inside.)

Chief Minister Hubert Hughes

Mr. Hughes acknowledged the receipt of the letter, dated August 10, but said he was not part of a promise made by the previous Government in 2009 to reimburse civil servants (the reduction it took from their salaries) when the island’s financial situation improved.

“I am still to understand how that’s going to work, because I have never seen it in any other country,” said the Chief Minister, whose own Government, on assuming office in February 2010, further reduced the salaries of the civil servants, but without promising any refund.
Mr. Hughes repeated an earlier charge that the previous Ministers of Government had substantially increased civil servants’ salaries in order for them (the Ministers) to achieve “the maximum pension and the maximum gratuity upon retirement.” He intimated that the workers’ salaries were later reduced when the financial situation could not sustain the pay increase. “That formula was to facilitate the retiring politicians. I am not part of it. I don’t know how they arrived at it and therefore there must be a general discussion that I too will learn what it is all about,” he stressed.

Mr. Hughes continued: “The windfall that they (ACSA) are talking about is not a normal windfall per se. It is normal taxes that the Government will get from the transfer of land from a foreign entity. And since Viceroy has been sold to another company, we are using the opportunity to demand what the former Government did not demand – some money for the Alien Land HoldingLicence transfer. That money is normal tax money, but it must be seen against the requirements of the Government to pay civil servants from now until at least by the end of December.

“I believe the technocrats will look at it, and how much this little bit of money will spread, because Anguilla is still in the red, big time; and we still have to borrow money to pay the civil servants this very month:not as much as we are accustomed to be borrowing, but we still have to borrow money.”

“What is the current financial situation in Anguilla?” one reporter asked.

“The current financial situation is still very unstable,” the Chief Minister replied. “If you listen to the news of the world, listen to what is happening in Spain, Italy and the other European capitals, in France, and so forth, and the fact that America has just lost ‘a triple A status’, you will know full well that the recession is not going away easily. When Anguilla was booming, we did not save money for a rainy day so now there is a slump, we are in the doldrums. We are in the slum and it will take time to get out it.”

Replying to a related question from another reporter, who thought the Government was managing to balance its expenditure and revenue reasonably well,Mr. Hughes responded: “We have been using great caution…There is a scientific accounting exercise being conducted now in the Ministry of Finance and that has been managing the little monies very carefully. We haven’t been doing the lavish borrowing because of the management. Now the difference here is that whereas the [former] Minister used to interfere and direct things, without understanding the realities of the figures, this Minister (Mr. Hughes) listens to the financial experts.”