Indeed it is always quite interesting the comments that emanate from the learned and so called big boys in the Trinidad society. Sometimes I wonder if they are in tuned with the reality of the country while they spout their asinine opinions. Over the last week I have been disturbed by the discussions taking place over the salary of Malcolm Jones, the $70'000 a month man. I had even gone ahead and calcualted its annual total of $840,000 long before the Raffique Shah article in last Sunday Express.
How can a man with Shah background support a salary like this? is how I responded when I read the story. I know Malcolm, the saviour, could commands big, astronomical bucks if he was employed in the private sector. But the point is this is the public sector and salaries as in almost every modern society is much smaller that the private. No public sector especially in the third world should be paying salaries like that especially when you compare it to the broad mass of workers. In TnT when a worker makes $5G's a month he or she is comfortable. So what does that make Jones and his kind including Manning and his ministers. How could Raffique Shah a man who portrays himself as a representative of the people truly justify this?
I strongly believes that if Jones wants the type of salary he is getting he should have stayed with the profit driven private sector. The public sector has always been about servive to your country and there are many capable employees I am sure who would do Jones job for $15G's a month. I am sure they would do a good job and be happy. So come on Shah( and your attempt to look back at the 70's and the demands of Weeks and Panday is also ludicrous, if not criminal) maybe it is time you take your place and be the next PNM senator, a title you seem to be unofficially wearing. Otherwise you are only making fodder for your nemesis Panday and when his party returns to power . Bas wouldfirstly remove his fatwah on you and then hold up your article in Rienzi, Fyzabad, Aranjuez, Tunapuna and Arima anywhere he could bus his many loyalist and say, look Shah (My bai) and all say its alright. And you know based on their track record Malcolm Jones would be working for peanuts and we the masses would continue to suffer.
Raffique Shah, I'm sorry, but you too gone through. Maybe now Ken Gordon and Carrington would reward you for spewing your new found capitalist rhetoric. Or, maybe, they already knew, (after all they brought or is it bought you on board) while you were hiding in the closet playing the masses as asses again.