BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, November 23, 2022 (SKNIS) – Civil Servants, Government Auxiliary Employees (GAEs), Pensioners and STEP workers across St. Kitts and Nevis have benefited from an extra month’s salary, which was paid on Tuesday, November 22, 2022—a gesture Prime Minister the Honourable Dr. Terrance Drew said was made to show appreciation to public servants for their hard work.
Prime Minister Dr Drew, while speaking on WINNFM’s Voices programme today, Wednesday, November 23, stated that the payment of the extra month’s salary, or a ‘double salary’ as it is colloquially termed, was also made to help stimulate the Federation’s economy.
“The economy needs stimulation as well and we have to stimulate the economy,” the Prime Minister said. “You as public servants…have worked hard. You have put yourselves out there and I think that you needed to have been shown, in a tangible way, that we appreciate that. But in addition to that, our aim is also to stimulate the economy, to get to people so that they can have a good Christmas, people can spend to help businesses and help all around so that all of us would benefit from that injection into the economy.”
The Honourable Prime Minister added that this was also part of the rationale behind his administration’s decision to pay Honoraria to government employees who worked on the frontline during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
Moreover, Prime Minister Dr Drew, who also serves as Minister of Finance in the Federal Government, said the payments of the double salary and the Honoraria are things that the Government is able to manage, particularly as it moves forward with the diversification of the Federation’s economy.
He said, “We’re going to hit hard in the construction field, in tourism. The CBI [Citizenship by Investment] programme right now is heavily dependent on, but we are going to diversify the economy so that we are not so heavily dependent on the CBI alone. You can have CBI, you can have tourism, you have construction, you can have agriculture, you can have energy, you can have financial services and you can have the offshore education sector and so forth. So, we are looking at multiple aspects of the economy that we can develop to make sure that we are receiving the necessary revenues to continue the social programmes and to keep us stable and strong.”