The Bahamas Prime Minister Answers: Here’s where we are. The national salary review is complete, and tonight it will be made public. While the review did not include every category of public servants, the same methodology will be applied to ensure increases are extended across the wider public service. This includes our teachers, whose hard work and dedication continue to shape the future of this nation.
It’s the most comprehensive review of public service pay in decades. It examines every grade, every scale, every allowance, and every increment. It looks at the impact of inflation, at fairness between professions, and at how we can modernize pay across the public service.
The findings show that since coming to office in 2021, public officers have received salary increases every year, and that entry-level workers, the ones earning the least, have benefited the most with the consistency and regularity of their reassessments, salary adjustments, and increments, ensuring that these officers received their due in a structured, timely way, after many years of delay.
We did this because we made a decision to put workers first. Some have asked about the delay.
The delay was not a cash flow problem. It was an administrative process, making sure the new salary adjustments for more than fifteen thousand public officers were accurate, fair, and done right the first time. I am satisfied we have resolved the issue, and I want to reassure every public servant that you will be paid before Christmas.
The union leaders have to do their jobs, to represent their members. But I have to do mine, to represent all Bahamians.
My responsibility is not only to one group, but to every citizen who depends on a strong, stable country.
Some have asked what the grievance really is. There is no grievance here. The grandstanding and public drama do not change the fact that this Government is paying workers as promised. So the question must be asked, is the objection to the fact that we are paying? Surely, no one can object to fairness being delivered.
There is a proper procedure for filing grievances, and that process is always available. But let’s be clear, this situation is not about a grievance. It is about the Government doing what is right by its workers.
Before they can be members of any union, they are first employees of The Government of The Bahamas. That is why I am speaking directly to you tonight, because not all public officers are union members, but every single one of you serves this nation. You deserve to hear from your Prime Minister directly.
Workers should always be beneficiaries of our negotiations but never pawns when we disagree. When politics, personal ambition, or theatrics replace genuine advocacy, it is the workers who suffer, and I will never allow that to happen.
I know that progress is still needed for some categories of workers, and we are continuing to review those cases. We are not finished, but we are further along than we have been in a very long time.
We may have differences in approach in looking after workers, but our common goal must always be the same, to improve the lives of Bahamian workers. That is what binds us, and that is what should guide us forward.
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