While it is pleased that members of the Joint Services will be benefitting from a tax-free month’s salary as a holiday bonus, the Guyana Public Service Union believes the same should have been extended to the healthcare workers and other public servants who have been working on the frontline.

In an interview, GPSU President Patrick Yarde complained that the two-week salary bonus offered to healthcare workers is not enough, adding that other public servants who have been working on the frontline since the pandemic started more than a year ago, should have also been considered for the end-of-year bonus.

“It is discrimination, with what was done and we keep seeing it happen over and over again and clearly it is intended to put workers against workers. Because at a certain time, I wanted to know if sugar workers were the only workers in the country and if everyone else sucking cane”, Mr. Yarde said.

He said the government has not been even-handed with its treatment of public servants and the union is now conducting a study on the amount of money that has been pumped into the Guyana Sugar Corporation by the Government as against other Government agencies and sectors.

For this year alone, Guysuco has been allocated over $6 Billion after receiving over $7 billion last year.

The union boss believes there needs to be more money going towards salary increases for public servants and towards the improvement of their working conditions.

The Union maintains that the recently announced across the board 7% salary increase for public servants is inadequate. The Government never consulted with the union on the salary increase matter and has continued to ignore the union’s requests for meetings on salary increases and other concerns about the state of the public service.

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