Last month, we gave you an update on the retired BDF soldiers who had not received their pension. Minister Henry Charles Usher explained that it was due to a mistake made during the Barrow Administration. Still, that didn't stop the Leader of the Opposition from posing the question to the Prime Minister again today in the House. Here's how that went.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"Since he could not comprehend what a standard six child would have comprehended what I said just now, I will send you a copy of the answers so you could sit down and study it and after you read it maybe a ten times, you might understand it. But madam speaker, in 2019, again, under the UDP government, the government agreed to regularize the rate of annual increment of enlisted soldiers. Remember the date, 2019, UDP government. They also agreed to extend the salary scale for officers. When the Ministry of Finance sent out the circular on this mater, they stated that this revision was not a salary increase, nor was it intended to be a salary increase, 2019, by the way."
"What it was then, it was a salary adjustment and a standardization exercise. The memo from finance went even further to state that any increase in the rates of pay arising from his exercise was a part of the regularization exercise. Now in implementing this, a mistake was made that some officers at the rank of private were place way up on the pay scale."
"It came to my attention a few weeks ago that some of the soldiers that were overpaid that it seems that some of them have retired and they're holding back on their gratuity to settle that overpayment and this government said we will not take away a single cent from them so we're going to write that off and then we're to proceed in paying our soldiers what they justly deserve."
