MONTEGO BAY, St James – Opposition spokesman on tourism, Edmund Bartlett, yesterday urged the government to set up a pension fund for employees in the sector instead of taxing their gratuities.

“My word to the Minister is that the answer to secure the pension benefits of the tourism worker is not in taxing him more but in providing greater savings opportunities for that worker.”

Gratuities represent that non-taxable portion of income that comes from 10 per cent of what the hotels earn from accomodation and restaurant and bar charges. It is shared equally among all hotel staff – with the exception of the General Manager – whose salary is much fatter than everyone else’s.

Bartlett said that a fund managed or coordinated by the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association could be extracted from the workers’ gratuities.

“This would not be a tax, it would be a saving and one that he could be sure about,” he said.

Noting that gratuities represented the bulk of the workers’ expendable income, Bartlett said that the government had a responsibility to provide the type of infrastructural suport that would allow them to save more from their gratuities.