The Editor
The Anguillian
Dear Sir:
NOT A WORD ABOUT THE SALARY REDUCTIONS
I read in The Anguillian some three weeks ago that the Anguilla Government had received the opinion from Mr. Anthony Astaphan with respect to the deferring of repayment of salary reductions to civil servants.
I am disheartened and disappointed by the fact that Mr. Astaphan’s opinion, dated 5th January, has been somewhere in Government’s hands for so long and yet there has been no official word about its receipt. What is so difficult just for the Government to tell civil servants that the report was received and is being studied? You hear so much about transparency and openness, yet in practice it is totally something else.
As I understood it, Mr. Astaphan’s opinion is that the salary reductions should not be permanent – perhaps for two or three years. It was indicated that there is nothing in the Anguilla Constitution to protect civil servants’ salaries, but that does not give Government the right to do as it pleases with peoples’ hard-earned money. Government should not think that it can arbitrarily reduce its workers’ salaries with little or no consideration about how they will pay bank loans, support themselves and their families; pay various taxes, etc.
What is the President of the Anguilla Civil Service Association doing about this matter? We cannot think about political loyalties when life is so difficult and there is an urgent need for redress.
Civil servants, Teachers and all other Government workers have been more than patient in the face of two salary reductions. What is disappointing is that it appears that the Government does not want to repay its workers.
This conclusion has been arrived at by the fact that Lawyer Astaphan was hired to look into the implications of deffering the repayments. Well, if I should paraphrase what the Chief Minister said about his $40,000 telephone reimbursement, the reduction of salary is our money and we want it back. If he can get his money, as I presume he has, by now, he should part-repay us, at least, and blame the short-payment on the sluggish economy. We would at least try to understand.
Starving Civil Servant
