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(CNS): Members of the Cabinet earned CI$3.3 million, about $305,000 each on average in 2022 the office of the auditor general has revealed in a new public interest report. Government ministers were not the only senior public sector employees to take home salaries and benefits that the average resident can only dream of, other members of parliament also earned an average of $285,000 per year and members of the judiciary also collected a total of $3.3 million an average pay and perks of around $302,000 each. Meanwhile, chief officers earned $4.3 million, about $204,000 each on average.
Across the civil service the report reveals that those in key management positions, grade E and above, earned a total of $35.4 million, about $136,000 per year on average.
Auditor General Sue Winspear explained that while the salaries are public information she conducted this the public interest to give the public better access to the information as the government is not reporting the salaries in the consolidated accounts.
“I have prepared this report to provide independent information and improve the transparency of the remuneration of key management personnel in the public service,” said Winspear. “The remuneration rates given in this report are already in the public domain as is much of the information. However, key management personnel information is not disclosed, as it should be, in the consolidated financial statements of the entire public sector. This report brings together that information for the first time.”
The Auditor General explained in the report that her office has issued an adverse audit opinion on the consolidated financial statements for the EPS since 2013 and one of the factors contributing to it is omissions in financial statement disclosures. “One of those omissions is that the Government has not
established a system for reporting key management personnel transactions,” she said. “As a result…the public does not routinely know what is spent on, for example, MPs’ salaries and benefits.
The report states that the Civil Service employed 4,566 people at the end 2022 and paid them all about
$360.4 million in remuneration or $79,000 on average. The report also highlights that in 2022,
there were 293 key management personnel across the Government and the Civil Service. They earned
$45million in total, about $154,000 each on average.
MPs, however, are in general the best paid of all public officials given that on top of their salaries and general benefits they are also paid additional allowances for constituency offices of some CI$5000 per month even though several of them use their homes as their offices and Jay Ebanks uses the North Side Civic Centre. The now premier Julianna O’Connor-Connolly and Moses Kirkconnell also get additional travel and accommodation allowances. Their office staff are also paid separately and not out of their constituency allowance.
Winspear makes no recommendations or judgments about the report and the amounts spent on politicians as the goal, she stressed, was transparency and giving the public a chance to see for themselves all in one place how much public cash goes on pay for those in senior public office.
See the report in full below:
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