The over forty staff members of the Government Information Agency have not been paid their salaries since the month of April and the Director of the Agency Neaz Subhan believes their job security is now under threat.
The Opposition parties used their majority in the National Assembly to reduce the budgetary allocations to GINA to $1. The Opposition parties APNU and AFC believe GINA through its programming has not been serving in the best interest of the nation but has rather been operating as a political side kick for the party in government.
Opposition Leader David Granger has complained to the President and the Speaker of the National Assembly in the past about the coverage being given to the Opposition by the Government Information Agency. He “rubbished” suggestions that GINA should only be focusing on the work of the executive.
Granger said GINA must recognise the Government is made up of various branches and not just the executive and therefore all of those branches should be covered fairly by GINA.
This is the second year in a row that GINA has seen its budgetary allocations reduced to $1. The Director of the Information Agency told News Source that he does not believe some workers would be able to go through the impact of the budget cuts for a third time.
Subhan said “we are currently working on a skeleton crew because we cannot allow staff to be coming into work every day and not sure about their salaries. So now we have them come in when we need them and they are in rotation”. He said the morale of his staff is very low at this stage as they await word on their salaries for the month of May.
He said what is taking place is no fault of his staff members and as such they should not be made to suffer. Subhan said he’ll be paying attention to the Government’s move to the courts on the budget cuts to see “what happens” with the Government Information Agency.
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