And while importers are feeling the pinch, so will public officers. A Government circular from the Financial Secretary proposes a wage freeze, a cut in expense allowances and gratuities and reduction in leave for contract workers.
By government's count, that should save 17 million dollars. PM says the senior managers are on board, and everyone else will have to be:
Rt. Hon. Dean Barrow- Prime Minister
"The heads of department, the senior managers, were offering to forfeit their increments for the financial year that starts tomorrow and as well to forfeit their allowances. We hope that the larger public service will understand the larger absolute necessity for this. In our earlier meetings at the national oversight committee, when the private sector people were telling us the stringency they were adopting, they kept asking what about the public sector. Well, here it is, the day of reckoning has arrived and so we hope that there will be the kind of understanding that the circumstances require."
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