Most retirees should go, says Arnhim Eustace

Leader of the Opposition Arnhim Eustace says that he wants to see the contracts for retired persons who hold positions within the government removed from the books.{{more}}

Eustace, speaking on radio on the New Democratic Party sponsored ‘New Times’ programme yesterday, Monday, January 16, said that there are some retirees still employed by government on a contractual basis, who are making more than some ministers of government.

He said that he estimated that the bill for these contracted workers had now got to as high as EC$2 million, up from $900,000 a few years ago, when there were fewer such persons, Eustace explained.

“My rough estimate is that they have 15 or 20 of them,” Eustace said.

“Three years ago, I did an analysis and had a press conference to show that we are paying $900,000 a year for less people than there were now. My estimates of how much government is paying people now is about $2 million and I think some of those should be removed,” he continued.

Eustace said there are many young people in the country who are looking for work and cannot find work, yet the government had persons who had reached the age of 80 and above and are still collecting salaries in excess of $100,000 a year, who already had their pensions and collected gratuity for their years serving in the Parliament.

“I am saying that there are persons receiving as much as $12,000 a month and some of them coming close to that and most of those contracts should be removed from the books,” Eustace contended.

“On what basis can you justify that? You can’t justify that and those persons should not be continuing to work. That list needs to be re-examined,” he said.

The Opposition Leader also accused the government of hiding the contracts; therefore he was making his own estimation.

“Most of them should go; I’m not making no apology for that. There is no justification for keeping most of those people, no justification

whatsoever,” Eustace said. (DD)