Tonight, the joint unions are celebrating a win after the Cabinet decided to unfreeze their increments effective April 1st. This comes after almost 3 years of sacrifice, since the increments were first frozen in 2020 under the Barrow Administration as a way to sustain the economy during the pandemic. And while the Briceno Administration had initially suggested resuming increments further along in the fiscal year, they have now agreed that it should come back at the start of the fiscal year.
The news was confirmed to us this morning by the prime minister and the Minister of Public Service, who also explained how the Cabinet came to the decision.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We have agreed that we will give them back their increment, as we said all along that we're prepared to do so."
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
"It has always been our goal to make sure that we unfreeze the increments this upcoming fiscal year. The discussion with the joint union team, it was very informative and instructive in terms of how we can get that done this upcoming fiscal year and certainly the head of the union negotiating team and deputy prime minister, he was the only certainly pushing that we do it as soon as possible so it was always the case where we want to do it as soon as we could and we're happy that we were able to do it this upcoming fiscal year."
Reporter:
"Is there going to be any mechanism change though as to the assessments?"
Henry Charles Usher, Minister of Public Service
"Well, we're working on that, we're actually working at the Ministry of Public Service not only on the appraisals but we're updating the public service regulations, we're looking at all the regulations to bring them up to date, I believe the last time Public Service regulations we're updating were about 2014/2015, so I think it's important we look at those, we see how we can improve those and we can improve the appraisal system as well."
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