by B. Roach
Chief Minister Reuben T. Meade
It took the Hon. Chief Minister and Minister of Finance Reuben T. Meade the entire week to eventually cite the ‘short fall in revenue collection’ as the main reason for the governments financial crunch at this time, that caused threat of non-payments and late payments of public servants and persons on welfare.
He said that although the government has received its full budgetary support from the UK, it is still unable to raise enough income locally to meet all its expenses, (budget estimates of 2010/11). Mr. Meade said also said that, “government will pay our workers but some of the other expenditure items we will control them, or we will not be in a position to pay them until we have funds available…”
Prior to this statement, the Cm feigned ignorance to the situation of non-payments. He said that it was one of his Ministers who drew it to his attention that some workers had not been paid past the end of the month. “Immediately I went down to the Ministry of Finance and the matter was resolved. It was simply somebody getting a particular key to do an override…” he offered.
At one point prior to this eventual statement, the CM launched a now usual attack on the efficiency and effectiveness of the public service. “Government has to be improve efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery y if we are efficient and effective in the delivery of government services, you do it as best as you possibly can, you make the savings wherever you can, then it protects the workers…” he said.
He also blamed the lack of the delivery on projects for the short falls in revenue, and again directly public servants. Following is an extract of what he said on ZJB radio.
“Government of Montserrat has a substantial amount of money in terms of its capital approval. If I was to say I am happy with the rate at which we’re spending that money I’ll be lying. I do not think that we have been working as hard as we can to ensure that we speed up the implementation of some of those projects. People out there looking for work and when we look at the past in which we are operating on some of the projects, it’s a total and absolute disappointment to me and I have made the request let us get on with it let us fast track, let us speed up the work, we have the money let us go ahead and spend the money, spend it properly and speed it up because when people have money in their pockets, especially construction workers they spend it,” he said.
About public servants he said: “But there are persons in government who appear as managers and they need to get up off their chairs or whatever they use to sit on their chairs, and work a little harder in terms of getting things done .
“For those of us who get paid every month end, whether we work or not we get paid and that’s a fact of life in the public service. In the private sector, ‘if yuh na wok yuh get pay’. If you do not produce you don’t get pay if you doing job work you can’t just be sitting down and expect to get paid.
“But the same set of people saying we are being paid late some of the same set of people are not doing what is required.”
