FNM’S FALSE ARGUMENT OVER RETIREES IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE
Public Service Minister Pia Glover Rolle tells the truth but the FNM prefers a lie.
Just gonna stand there and watch me burn?
Well, that’s all right because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry?
Well, that’s all right because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie
—Riahanna
Last week in the House of Assembly on Wednesday Pia Glover Rolle who is the Minister of the Public Service answered a parliamentary question about the number of retirees that work in the public service after having retired. She answered straightforwardly: 491.
That was the pretext for another gotcha moment by the FNM and its trolls. The story is that the PLP does not help young people, that they are giving all these old people jobs and paying them pension and salary. You know the drill. There followed the jokes and memes on social media.
Except hang on a second, the retired make up 1.9 per cent of total public work force. The PLP has hired 2000 people under 35 since they came to power in 202. Most of the people who were rehired were policemen. Under the law you cannot take away their pension if you ask them to come back to work.
None of that means anything in the face of this narrative of the FNM.
The PLP should look at the last census. They can safely ignore young people. They are too fickle anyway. The PLP needs to concentrate on older people. That is who runs things in this country. The census shows us that the population is growing older. The most important cohort is going to be the people over sixty five. The median age for the country is now 35. So policies and programmes need to be shifted toward the older people not young people.
To be sure young people are important to their grammies. Their grammies want to make sure they have jobs, but if you really want a conversation with voters, it’s the mature voters you have to capture.
The argument over retirees is tiresome. It may be cheaper just to tell a lie.
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