Wage freeze in the public sector

THE EDITOR, Sir:

AT THE recently held annual conference of the Jamaica Stock Exchange, held at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel, I spoke,
inter alia
, about wage adjustments in the public sector. Apart from the two years of wage freeze included in the upcoming agreement with the International Monetary Fund, I also made reference to the wage freeze under the previous public-sector memorandum of understanding process and concluded that the public sector would be having a total of four years of wage freeze over a 10-year period.

The presentation was probably not sufficiently clear, as some people have interpreted my comments to suggest that there will be four years of public sector wage freeze. This not so; the agreement with the IMF as set out in the Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies states that "the Government is committed to maintaining the current public sector wage freeze on salary increases into FY 2011/12".

I trust this clears up any mis-understanding on the issue.

I am, etc.,

Wesley Hughes

Financial Secretary

Ministry of Finance and the

Public Service