By KYLE WALKINE

Tribune Staff Reporter

kwalkine@tribunemedia.net

FORMER Minister of Works Neko Grant has called for a detailed salary breakdown of all officers within the ministry as he said it is very unclear to him and citizens of the country how much these men and women are being paid. 

According to Mr Grant, the 2014/2015 Budget is a “book of confusion.”

While making his contribution to the Budget Debate, Mr Grant said he is very concerned about the absence of the salary breakdown of the minister, the parliamentary and permanent secretaries, as well as all other officers in the Ministry of Works. 

“Their salaries have all been lumped together, and so we do not know who is being paid, how much they are being paid and their positions,” the Free National Movement (FNM) MP for Central Grand Bahama said yesterday. 

As stated in the 2013/2014 Budget, the funds allocated for their salaries were $12,066,223, a 275 per cent increase from the previous year’s $4,391,928.

In the 2014/2015 Budget, funds for their salaries increased another 16.5 per cent to $14,060,692.

However, Mr Grant said he has an issue with the lack of provisions for increases for those he calls the “hard-working civil servants” for three years noting that the projected salary allocations for these workers in the 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 Budgets are $14,160,692. 

The MP said the government needs to stop misleading the Bahamian people. 

“I draw your attention to the capital budget and the construction of the Grand Bahama Fire Station,” he said. “There are $2 million allocated in this year’s budget, $2 million in the 2015/2016 preliminary forecast and another $2 million in the preliminary forecast for 2016/2017. In total, that is $6 million over three budget cycles. This suggests that the fire station will take three years to complete.”

Mr Grant sarcastically asked if the Grand Bahama Fire Station is going to be the size of the Baha Mar project for it to take three years to complete. 

The MP requested that Minister of Works Philip Davis table the list of contractors invited to bid on the proposed fire station. “Something is wrong with these allocations,” he said. 

He also pointed out that the budget has limited allocation for educational  and other infrastructural projects, particularly in Grand Bahama. 

“In reviewing the budget, there is no allocation for the West Grand Bahama School and no allocation for the seawall in Smith’s Point. The funding is inadequate to address the Fishing Hole Road concern and is also inadequate for the fire station,” Mr Grant said. 

His critique is the latest from opposition MPs who think the government’s budget is insufficient to meet the current needs of the Bahamian people. 

East Grand Bahama MP Peter Turnquest has already dismissed the government’s 2014/2015 budget as a “dismal failure”, saying that it contained nothing but false hope and the “same old promises.”

“In fact, it is a repeat of not only last year’s budget and the mid-year statement, but it is nothing new with nothing of material substance,” Mr Turnquest said. 

The FNM MP also criticised the government for “double taxing” Bahamians by not lowering the cost of customs duty despite the introduction of Value Added Tax (VAT), set for a January 1, 2015 implementation. 

State Minister for Finance Michael Halkitis has since defended the government’s budget saying that detractors like those in the FNM have stretched the interpretation of the budget to cause “unwarranted fear in the minds of the public.”

“Given the government’s fiscal needs and for the sake of prudent and conservative fiscal planning, no wide-scale reductions in tariffs and excises are being announced at this time. That in no way says that there will be no tariff and excise cuts whatsoever. It says no widescale cuts now,” Mr Halkitis said on Monday. 

“The reality is that VAT will take effect next January. During this period, we will, of course, engage in debate on the VAT Bill and the government will be looking at a selective and targeted list of reductions to tariffs and excises that are warranted and justified.”