December 8 th , 2024
In an unprecedented turn of events, Chief Personnel Officer, Dr. Daryl Dindial, has descended into the political arena to defend Keith Rowley and Colm Imbert, thereby turning himself, and his office, into the lickspittle of his political masters.
Lickspittle is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as a person who behaves obsequiously to those in power, with their sample sentence being "he is a lickspittle for the Establishment". They very well could have placed a picture of Dr. Dindial right next to their definition.
After signing off on the Salaries Review Commission (SRC) Report, which gave himself a 30 percent wage increase, Dr. Dindial justified on national television the obscene pay hike for the Prime Minister, by favourably quoting from Rowley’s infamous press conference which has angered the entire nation. Dindial made the inane, self-serving argument that if the Prime Minister’s salary was frozen, that would send a wrong signal to the rest of the workers in the country.
He then tried to mask the Prime Minister's unjust increase using creative maths, to technically tweak the figure from the correctly calculated 47.5% pay hike, down to a fudged 28%. This is the type of maths that Colm Imbert used the day before to cover up the half a billion dollar cost overruns at the ANR Robinson International Airport.
Dr. Dindial is showing himself to be the type of pliant, unquestioning, and eager-to please public servant that Imbert, Rowley and the PNM find ideal, and will have free hand to staff the TTRA with.
Dr. Dindial, however, should follow the example of his brave colleague, the AuditorGeneral, Jaiwantie Ramdass, and fiercely guard the independence of his position, and thereby the integrity of our Republic.
Instead, the CPO is carrying out the wicked instructions of Rowley and Imbert, and shamelessly defending the injustice as if Rowley and Imbert “spit in his mouth”, as the local parlance crudely but appropriately puts it.
Dr. Dindial told public service unions that they were lucky that the Finance Minister instructed him to open negotiations with a pay offer of 5%, and spitefully suggested that he could have opened the negotiations with 0-0-0% if the Minister had not said that.
Dr. Dindial’s unjust arrogance directly follows the example of Colm Imbert’s many flippant and callous statements to workers to “Take 4% or leave it,” and Rowley’s bullying threat to public servants, “They coming outside the Prime Minister office every week. They shouting at me as if I have it in my pocket to give them. Well, let me tell you tonight, many of you who enjoy that back pay, who shouting for that back pay. You may get the back pay and lose your job!”
This PNM Government has poisoned and corrupted the entire collective bargaining process, eliminated all independence and good faith, selfishly benefited from and defended the grossest inequality and injustice, and thereby enraged the working people of this country.
The Rowley Government will certainly pay a price in the upcoming General Elections, which the entire population wants immediately, so that they can mete out their own justice. We cannot take this evil and corrupt PNM Government any longer.
Respectfully submitted
RUDRANATH INDARSINGH
Member of Parliament for Couva South and SHADOW RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE
MINISTRY OF LABOUR and TOBAGO AFFAIRS.
681-2525, rudranath43@gmail.com