In opposition, the leaders of the People’s Action Movement (PAM), Shawn Richards and the Concerned Citizens Movement (CCM), Mark Brantley, joined then opposition MP and Team Unity Leader, Dr. Timothy Harris in hailing him as the “the best ever Minister of Finance.”
Now Prime Minister and Minister of Finance for the past three years, Dr. Harris while granting hefty duty-free concessions to expatriates, his family members and friends, has now targeted the incomes of locals and has dipped his financial claws in the gratuity of Kittitians and Nevisians.
Having reduced the holiday pay of cleaners, ward maids, cooks, laundry workers and orderlies at the four health institutions in St. Kitts, earlier this year, the scissors-wielding finance minister has now pounced on the gratuity of civil servants.
Chairperson of the opposition St. Kitts and Nevis Labour Party (SKNLP), Hon. Marcella Liburd in levelling incompetence and bad governance against Dr. Harris, accused him of cutting civil servants’ gratuity by 50%.
The Central Basseterre MP said Harris had “callously” slashed the amount of gratuity due to retiring public servants and had done so unbeknownst to the workers.
“Just recently the Government arbitrarily decided that all gratuities for workers will be cut by 50 percent, from 20 percent to 10 percent. Just arbitrarily; again, no previous discussion with workers, when you go for your gratuity that’s when you are being told, well your gratuity is now… it’s not at 20 percent you get but at 10 percent. Grave injustice is being metered out to workers people have already set their lives and bargained for and accounted for these monies, and then when you think you getting 20 percent it’s 10 percent now because the government has reduced the gratuity from 20 percent to 10 percent,” Liburd told WINNFM.
“I want to say to those people do not accept it. Consult a lawyer because in many instances these are contracts that were started under the 20 percent. So how can you at the end of your service now go and somebody says, ‘no no no, it’s now 10 percent. Here is your 10 percent.’ Do not accept it.”
But although denying it, Prime Minister, who is known to mislead the nation, was forced to admit his administration has plans to bring an end to paying gratuity to persons working for the government on a contractual basis.
“There had been in the past where persons would come in and in addition to their normal payment – you and I do the same work, you come in for two years or three years and at the end of it you get a percentage of your gross accumulation and we have been advised, and our own analysis proved, that one; that it was unfair to those who were doing similar work,” he said to WINNFM.
“So over time this gratuitous payment for contractual workers…that would be phased out. The government will pay you what your service is worth in the marketplace and at the end of we will have no further obligation to you,” he admitted.
However there are several civil servants who have confirmed that when they received their gratuity it was at 10 percent instead of 20 percent.
Recently signed contracts have also been reduced from two and three years to one year and gratuity from 20 percent to 10 percent.