Dear Editor,

Regarding the Jamaica Observer article, entitled ‘Stalemate’, I believe a public education campaign is needed to carefully explain to public sector workers that if the Jamaican economy is strong then so will be their purchasing power. In the current wage negotiations civil servants are reportedly demanding a 30 per cent increase in each of the two years of the contract. They need to understand that even if they are given a 50 per cent increase, and the economy is floundering, then in no time the increase would prove insufficient, as inflation would render the increase inadequate.

Last year, we benefited from the $18,000 tax break that was promised in the last election. How many of us still feel $18,000 richer? If we continue like this then we will end up like Zimbabwe, where workers may receive billions of Zimbabwean dollars that value nothing more than US$5.

Many civil servants take home between one and two million dollars, so, they are, for all intents and purposes, millionaires, but they can do very little with it as our economy has not grown over the years and, at some points, have contracted. We cannot continue to practise consumerism where we perpetually dish out money, essentially for consumption in a stagnant economy.

The fact is our economy is overvalued. The textbook law of economics is barely applicable in Jamaica. So, for example, most Jamaicans cannot afford a home, but prices do not come down — as taught in schools or as occurs in some economies — to where the market would be satisfied. Therefore, the Government, in negotiating, should appeal to market players to adjust their prices in response to the appreciating dollar so that consumers — including public sector workers like myself — can get some reprieve. Businesses need to understand that if more people can afford their products then they are better off. Additionally, arrangements could be made (as a short-term buffer) to extend the benefits on the e-pay card so that more merchants are invited to provide discounts to public sector workers.

As a civil servant, I am willing to unfetter the Government’s hands so the nation can achieve the “5 in 4” target and to have a lowered debt-to-GDP ratio so that our economy can be stronger and my purchasing power more meaningful. I would give them the four years before making demands that will continue to prolong the agony of an overburdened State. Had we done this long ago, instead of signing a stupid memorandum of understanding and hiking interest rates so we can sell expensive government paper on the local market to pay public debt — and, in effect, diverting funds from the productive sector which needed to grow — then we would have been in a better place right now and civil servants would have been better remunerated.

J Bartley

jeanannbartley@yahoo.com