City Council agrees to 10% retroactive salary increase for workers

The Georgetown Mayor and City Council today agreed to pay its workers a 10% retroactive salary increase for 2024 after a number of its essential workers, including Constabulary officers and garbage collectors staged a sit-in.

The Municipality has also agreed to pay the workers an 8% salary increase for 2025.

The Georgetown Mayor and City Council and the Guyana Labour Union (GLU) signed the agreement today following the intervention of the Chief Labour Officer (CLO), Dhaneshwar Deonarine.

Quoting the agreement, City Mayor, Alfred Mentore, told News Source that according to the agreement, the workers would be paid the increase on or before March 31, 2025.

“The agreement clearly states that the parties have agreed that there will be a 10% retroactive salary increase for 2024 to be paid on or before 31^st March 2025…The parties agreed that there will be an 8% salary increase for 2025, which will be retroactive for 2025, and which will also be paid before the 31^st of July, 2025,” the Mayor said.

The City Mayor said the workers staged the sit-in based on poor advice given by the GLU.

The Mayor explained that it was never the Council’s intention not to increase the salaries of the workers, but it was deeply concerned about the Municipality’s ability to finance the increase, having only received 58% of its rates and taxes for 2024.

He said the Municipality needed time to generate the revenues needed to afford the increases.

“We have agreed to these terms and conditions based on our ability to also get our money in. So, the union, in this case, has given us time, which we proposed to the council earlier this year, that what we need is time,” he explained.

Based on the agreement, the Union has agreed to support the Mayor and City Council in its efforts to garner its outstanding revenues by imploring the public, businesses, and other entities to pay their taxes.

Meanwhile, over at Freedom House, Vice President and General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), Bharrat Jagdeo lashed out at the Council, which has an APNU majority, over its inability to pay its workers.

“The City Council has a huge source of potential income from which they could meet their liabilities to the workers to those who provide services to the city and also for developmental works. But they refuse to go after that huge source of revenue. They keep diverting the issue, every time it is raised, to the government’s support to the city,” the General Secretary said.

He said Government’s support to the city has been “enormous” with a number of Government-funded developmental projects being rolled out in the city, including the improvements to roads and bridges and the development of green spaces.

Jagdeo said the City Council must do its part and collect rates and taxes owed.

But City Mayor Alfred Mentore, assured News Source that “everybody will fall under the hammer,” and outstanding taxes would be sought, including those owed by political parties and the Government itself.