Premier Dr. Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley explains the details of the Schedule of Additional Provisions. (Photo: SCREENSHOT)

In the 2024 Budget Address last November, Premier Dr. Natalio “Sowande” Wheatley announced a Cabinet decision to include about $10 million in this year’s budget to ensure that all public officers earn a living wage.

The cost of the salary raises provided this year, however, exceeded that estimate by at least $13 million, Dr. Wheatley acknowledged last week in the House of Assembly.

In large part to cover the shortfall — a “blunder” that opposition member Myron Walwyn said should result in Dr. Wheatley’s resignation as the minister of finance — the HOA unanimously passed a Schedule of Additional Provisions on Friday.

The initial cost of the salary increases was originally estimated using the Compensation Review and Job Classification Report completed last November by a Trinidad branch of the global consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), which was hired by the Deputy Governor’s Office.

After the new salary structure took effect in March — with the government claiming that all public officers were then earning a living wage — the DGO told the Beacon that the annual cost of the increases was projected to be around $10 million.

But Dr. Wheatley told the HOA last Thursday that a major discrepancy was discovered after the Ministry of Finance conducted an “analysis of the impact of the compensation review on the 2024 budget allocations for personal emoluments” on April 19.

“The analysis revealed that there was a significant variance between the funding required for personal emoluments for the current officers, which as of [April 15] amounted to $25,056,518, and a variance between that figure and the $11.7 million appropriated in the budget,” the premier said.

Investigation

Dr. Wheatley also said that Governor Daniel Pruce had agreed to his request for an investigation into the PWC report.

“A number of problematic assumptions were made in the report that resulted in the variance in the amount stated in the report and the amount computed by the Ministry of Finance,” the premier explained.

This variance, he added, is of “great concern” to his government.

“As a result of this variance, Cabinet has recommended to the governor an immediate freeze on non-essential hiring, restrictions on travel, advancing the implementation of a contributory pension scheme, and the establishment of a committee to develop proposals or consider proposals for revenue-raising initiatives and cost-saving measures,” Dr. Wheatley said.

Call for resignation

During the public debate on the SAP on Friday, Mr. Walwyn (R-D6) suggested that the discrepancy was even higher than the premier claimed, and he called for Dr. Wheatley’s resignation from the post of finance minister.

“What you have shown to this country is that you’re not capable of being the minister of finance,” Mr. Walwyn said. “How can you underestimate — the truth really is it’s about $20 million; it is really about $20 million. Madam Speaker, how can you get that wrong? A $20 million mistake. And what is even worse is everybody has their job; nothing has been done whatsoever to show contempt for this level of mistake.”

Opposition member Stacy Mather, an at-large representative who serves as deputy speaker, also spoke during the debate.

Though he did not echo Mr. Walwyn’s call for Dr. Wheatley’s resignation, he did request an apology.

“I’m not saying that the premier needs to remove himself, but maybe he needs to go on Chat GPT and start typing a message,” Mr. Mather said. “Maybe a little help from AI to get something said that touches the heart of our people and gives them some kind of reassurance.”

Ministers defend premier

Government ministers, however, defended the premier.

Communications and Works Minister Kye Rymer said that Dr. Wheatley’s resignation would be “premature” and added that the governor’s investigation would “get to the bottom of what took place and who erred in terms of why we are here today.”

Agriculture and Fisheries Junior Minister Dr. Karl Dawson also came to Dr. Wheatley’s defence.

“Yes, it is quite a blunder, but there have been various officers, various professionals, that have looked through these matters, and still it came through the way it did,” he said. “And I’m proud of the premier in this sense: He’s not saying that ‘I had nothing to do with it.’ He is saying, ‘We’re going to get to the bottom of it. We’re going to find out where this error was. We’re going to find out where the trouble was, and we will act accordingly.’”

‘Shocked’

Deputy Premier Lorna Smith said both she and Dr. Wheatley were “shocked” when they learned of the discrepancy.

She also commended the premier for asking the governor to request an investigation.

“I also want to say that I have full confidence in the premier and the way in which he has handled this matter once it came to his attention,” she said.

But Ms. Smith also stressed the importance of correct action going forward.

“Should this matter not be dealt with in the way in which I expect it to be dealt with, I certainly would see it, as I said to one of my colleagues, as the quintessential absence of accountability,” she said. “We cannot, as senior public servants in the ministry responsible for public service and the ministry responsible for finance, be making that kind of grievous mistake.”

Pushing back

In Dr. Wheatley’s closing statement, he pushed back against Mr. Walwyn’s claims, alleging that calling the discrepancy a “$20 million mistake is misleading.”

The deficit, he said, would have been $20 million only if government had continued to hire.

“We had to essentially defund some of those positions, so the deficit was not as large because we did not hire at that rate” that was approved in the budget, he explained.

The SAP

The public debate on the SAP came on Friday after the HOA came out of a closed-door committee session on the topic.

The HOA began the discussions on Aug. 2, after the premier introduced a motion to approve the schedule.

The SAP is designed to free up nearly $27 million to be spent on recurrent expenditure in excess of the appropriated amount, according to the premier.

An additional $23 million in savings from funding reallocations is to be spent in variation of the amount originally appropriated for recurrent expenditure.

For capital acquisition expenditure, the schedule proposes about $2.8 million in additional spending and a variation of approximately $1.3 million.

Additionally, some $5.2 million is proposed for additional capital expenditure, along with a variation of about $1.6 million.

The motion does not detail the purpose of all the funding changes, and they weren’t broken down in full detail during the public debate in the HOA.