The Dominica Labour Party Administration in its new term in office will continue to address concerns of the island’s public officers.
This was confirmed on Saturday, December 7th by Prime Minister Honourable Roosevelt Skerrit following his swearing in at the State House.
He explained that urgent attention will be paid to the reclassification of sections of the public service, after the official swearing in of the incoming cabinet.
“I sincerely believe that the best route to go to addressing this systematically is the reclassification exercise. A two percent, a five percent or even a ten percent increase in anybody salary at this stage is not going to address the problem. It might be an emotional thing but in terms of addressing your core issue, it’s not going to work. And I think that we should go with the route of reclassification, with our focus urgently on the police, nurses and the teachers. These three groups they provide a different service from the rest of the public service, and I think that the society has to appreciate that. But I don’t think I can continue taking the blame for things that I have no part to play in. But I have the responsibility as Prime Minister for everybody, and I intend to pay attention to this,” the Prime Minister stated.
Prime Minister Skerrit went on to add that with the reclassification method, they can better address the issue of salary increases.
“So even in the formation of cabinet, that is going to be looked at very seriously, and we will put a mechanism in place towards addressing this. So I think reclassification is the best way to go as we can achieve a number of things. One, we can deal with issue of salary increases through the reclassification exercise; and two, you will find that people can move from one tier to the other upward. And of course the new structure that we have for nursing and for teaching will address a lot of the issues that are present. So I am hoping that soon after the cabinet is sworn in, we can start the process of engaging the public servants in order for us to arrive at some kind of understanding. So let’s do the reclassification exercise. Let us put a timeline to this so that people know that this is how we are going to approach this and so that in a more structured, more organized way we can get this going,” he further added.