Does Guyana get value for these special salaries
Stabroek News
April 2, 2004
Is the country getting value for money for the millions being expended each month in super salaries for a select few government/state officials?
Topping the list is long-term consultant, Dr Coby Frimpong, who apart from earning a whopping US dollar salary each month, was given a house-lot in the prized Eccles new scheme.
The PPP/Civic government inherited Frimpong as part of the Economic Recovery Programme in 1992 when he was attached to the State Planning Secretariat overseeing the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP). Frimpong was on the World Bank payroll earning a fraction of his current earnings.
He left sometime in 1993/4 and returned in 1995 under the USAID funded Building Equity and Enhancement Project (BEEP) as an adviser to then Finance Minister, Bharrat Jagdeo (a former state planning secretariat employee himself). When that project came to an end, funding was secured to retain Frimpong under a World Bank project at the same super salary. Another consultant under the BEEP, Pat Thompson, had handed in his report and left.
Frimpong migrated to the Office of the President when Jagdeo ascended to the Presidency in 1999 to head a unit set up there called the Executive Implementation Unit. When that World Bank project ended, his income was assured, as he was hand picked by the government to head the policy coordination and program management unit to oversee the public sector technical assistance credit from the World Bank to assist the government to build capacity to meet its governance and poverty reduction objectives.
That is a loan project, which will have to be repaid by Guyanese taxpayers, including those public servants earning just over US$100 a month as a minimum wage.
Stabroek Business contacted the press liaison officer to the President, Robert Persaud, to determine what value for money the country has had from retaining the services of Frimpong for the last 10 years. Persaud said he would get back to this newspaper with an answer if he could secure one.
Usually, consultants are hired to work with local counterparts to allow for capacity building. However, it is not sure what capacity has been built over the last 10 years with Frimpong's continued presence.
Frimpong does not have an arms length relationship with the government or the President, having thrown a party at his residence for Jagdeo when he acceded to the Presidency in 1999.
Both independent chartered accountant, Christopher Ram and Raymond Gaskin, a former dollar a year worker for the government and adviser to the late President Cheddi Jagan, feel Guyana has not received value for its investment in Frimpong.
"No person in this country, in any area of activity, be it the Guyana Power and Light, the Guyana Water Inc is worth US$10 000 - US$15 000 a month. The Chancellor, the President, the Chief Justice nor the Auditor General earns such a salary. A person with specialised training who is not available can be offered a maximum of US$5000 per month on a short term assignment," Gaskin asserts. He questions whether Frimpong when he decides to leave Guyana would be able to command the salary he currently does elsewhere. Gaskin also argues that Frimpong's output is not worth the salary he is paid.
Ram does not know what the responsibilities of Frimpong are but argues that an economy like Guyana's can ill-afford his services, which are just not worth the sum he is being paid.
"If he has produced value for money, I just can't recognise it, whether we are talking about his stint at the Ministry of Finance or the Office of the President," Ram said.
Frimpong is among a few officials who command a super salary in the public service and pay no taxes including Kevin Hogan with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme. There are other public officials who are paid US dollar salaries, which do not fall into the super salary category and do not pay taxes.
These include Winston Jordan, Andrew Bishop, R D'Andrade, Geoff DaSilva, Winston Brassington, Khurshid Sattaur, Clement Sealy and Yale Holder. Financing of these salaries are under loan programmes - the Finance Sector Programme 956 and the Public Sector Technical Assistance Credit 3726.
However, Ram says that the entertaining of a US salary structure within the government makes a complete mess of the public sector modernisation programme, as any attempt to rationalise will have to take every player and position into account. He asks whom the US dollar salary earners are comparable to?
In the case of having short term consultancies to build capacity, Ram says the government has not at all been concerned about building capacity but has put politics and party interest above national interest and cannot justify having Frimpong here for 10 years.
And asked whether it was prudent to take loan resources to pay super salaries, Ram says one has to take the overall value for money approach and if the project yields a positive value, then it would be prudent. But he notes that the government has been resisting the claims of ordinary workers for wage increases on the basis of a budget deficit.
"How can they borrow to pay some privileged elite and not pay the ordinary employees?" Ram queries.