KINGSTON, Jamaica — Prime Minister Andrew Holness on Monday announced a raft of measures under which he said members of the political directorate will be held to account for the higher salaries they will receive as part of the Government’s compensation review for the public sector.

In a press conference, Holness expressed that while he will reject the new salary package presented for the Prime Minister, the proposed wages for other politicians remain intact.

READ: Holness giving up his salary increase

The Prime Minister, in justifying the huge increase presented last week by Minister of Finance Dr Nigel Clarke, expressed that contrary to popular belief, the duties of a politician involve much more than “wearing suits and giving speeches.”

“There is a false notion that all the Minister does is make speeches and wear a suit. I can tell you that that is not the case. Ministers have statutory duties to apply discretion, to resolve conflicts, to make policy. Ministers have a duty to make legislation, they have quite a bit of ceremonial duties that we may look upon as not being necessary or useful but in the operations of the Government, it’s necessary and useful,” Holness said.

“Ministers do quite a bit of work with other counterparts overseas. Ministers have to be advocates, they have to champion issues and indeed ministers most of them have constituency work that they have to do as well. It is a consuming job.”

Under the new proposed wages presented by the finance minister, members of parliament will see their salary increase from $11.1m in 2022 to $14.2m in 2024.

But while the increase may seem exorbitant, Holness said the figure would have been much higher had his administration followed the rates based on the assessment tool designed to review compensation rates of public sector workers.

“The same tool that we developed to assess the jobs of public sector workers, that same tool was used to assess the jobs of the ministers and members of parliament. When we priced it, the job of a minister would be at the highest level of the public sector. The public sector now has 16 levels and the job of a minister is at level 16,” Holness said. “When we decided how we were going to structure this it would be much higher than what we pitched it at. Yes, the salary increases were significant, 200 per cent and it’s a shocking amount but based upon objective evaluation, it would have been even higher and we decided to bring it down to what would not compromise the logic of the compensation system.”

The Prime Minister, in stating that he encourages ministers to accept the new rates, said it would not come without strict accountability moves. Holness said that in addition to other sanctions, ministers will now be fined for missing Parliamentary sittings.

“We decided that what we would do is to maintain the structure of accountability which has long been established now for more than 50 years. You want to align your compensation with the responsibility that’s critical,” he said.

“So when we brought the salaries to the public, we didn’t necessarily emphasize this other element of it. However, to be clear, on several occasions, I have said that now that we have addressed salary issues, the next phase of the reform must be productivity which involves a new performance-based system and an accountability system.”

The accountability framework for Ministers will include:

1. Written job description to be tabled in parliament

2. Enhanced Code of Ethics

3. Written accountability reports by MPs

4. Special courses of training for MPs and Senators

5. Minister will be required to publish targets and policy goals