By the end of 2025, the government will have increased the salaries of public servants, teachers, and members of the disciplined services by 46 per cent since 2021.
This is according to the Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance and the Public Service, Dr Ashni Singh, when he presented the 2025 budget to the National Assembly Friday last.
Public servants have benefitted from annual salary increases of seven per cent in 2021, eight per cent in 2022 and 6.5 per cent in 2023.
Last year has been a landmark for industrial relations in the public sector, with several multi-year agreements concluded.
“The Government and the Guyana Public Service Union (GPSU) after extensive discussions and negotiations concluded a multi-year agreement with respect to employment benefits for public servants for 2024 and 2025,” Dr Singh detailed.
This pact represents the first multi-year agreement concluded by GPSU with any government in recent memory.
Within the framework of the agreement, public servants benefitted from a 10 per cent across-the-board increase for 2024, placing $18 billion in additional disposable income in their hands.
They will benefit from a further eight per cent raise in 2025.
According to Minister Singh, this followed a three-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the Guyana Teachers Union (GTU) and the Ministry of Education (MoE).
Similar multi-year agreements were concluded with the University of Guyana Senior Staff Association (UGSSA), University of Guyana Workers Union (UGWU), and Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), under which these workers received a 10 per cent salary increase for 2024, and an eight per cent and nine per cent increase to be paid in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
The minister said public servants have incrementally benefitted from a 35 per cent salary raise over the 2021 to 2024 period.
“And the eight per cent salary increase to be paid this year would aggregate to a 46 per cent increase over five years from 2021 to 2025,” he informed the National Assembly.
This represents the across-the-board increase granted over the years and special adjustments to selected categories of workers.
These include the reinstatement of the one-month bonus to the disciplined services, as well as new recruitment, especially of personnel in the education, health, and national security sectors. (Department of Public Information)
