Backdated Payments and Unannounced Increases: Inside the Browne Administration’s Salary Controversy
Ministers in the Browne Administration have been awarded an increase in their Duty Allowance, as of January 1, 2023, taking their payment from $1,000 to $3,000 a month. Accordingly, all eight Cabinet ministers – Gaston Browne, Maria Browne, E.P. Chet Greene, Charles “Max” Fernandez, Steadroy “Cutie” Benjamin, Molwyn Joseph, Melford Nicholas, and Darryl Matthew – will receive $24,000, each, to cover the Allowance for last year, 2023.
This hike follows their controversial salary increase of 14 percent – which was reported by a local news outlet Friday, April 5 – which was backdated to last January, as well. The sums in back-pay ranged from $19,000-plus for the prime minister to $6,000-plus for the senators who serve as ministers of state.
Again, there was no word of this increase in Duty Allowance in this week’s Cabinet Notes or in the post-Cabinet press briefing.
Ironically, the sources said, despite Prime Minister Browne’s claim that the increase in Opposition Members’ salaries had been delayed by a “glitch” in information relayed from the Parliament, no instructions to pay them has been sent to the Treasury, to date.
On Friday, April 12, on an outing on Observer Radio, Opposition Leader Jamale Pringle described Browne’s comments on the 14 percent increase to government ministers as untruths.
He noted that the 2024 Budget Estimates record the same amounts in annual salaries for parliamentarians as were recorded since 1994, proving that no increase this year – and none for last year – had been authorized.
