Tuesday, January 05, 2016

The Government’s planned reform of the public sector pension scheme will obviously encounter resistance from its employees. In fact, a few of the bargaining units have already voiced concern about the measure.

However, the leaders of the unions representing State employees should bear in mind that the Administration has no choice but to implement the reform as part of a broad range of measures to reduce cost to the Government.

As it now stands, public sector pension liabilities are paid from the Consolidated Fund, instead of from money set aside for that purpose.

So, for example, Government expenditure on public sector pensions rose from $16.7 billion (6.2 per cent of total non-debt expenditure) in 2010/2011 to $24.1 billion (8.8 per cent of non-debt budget) in the fiscal year 2012/2013.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/Public-sector-should-embrace-pension-reform_47795