Arthur Hall, Senior Staff Reporter

DAYS BEFORE the Government presents the 2009-2010 Estimates of Expenditure, there is no final word on how the administration will finance an expected $29 billion increase in the public sector wage bill.

The Sunday Gleaner has confirmed that up to late last week the Bruce Golding-led administration was nursing a massive headache as it looked at possible options to plug the $29 billion hole.

According to a senior government source, the administration has floated the idea of a wage freeze and is looking to the trade unions to bail it out of this mess.

not spared

In the meantime, Senator Dwight Nelson, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Finance, in a release issued yesterday, said that "the public sector in Jamaica is not spared from the threat of job losses".

Nelson told The Sunday Gleaner that he was hopeful that public sector workers would hold strain.

"I have been having discussions with all public-sector groups, including the police, the nurses and the teachers. The discussions continue and I am hopeful that we will arrive at a mutually acceptable position in respect of restraint," Nelson said.

The Government is desperately trying to keep the lid on the public sector wage bill which is projected at $149 billion in the 2009-2010 fiscal year.

Nelson said that putting the 2009-2010 Budget together had been a tremendously difficult task.

"The crafting of this Budget is perhaps the most difficult task any Jamaican Government has had to face in the history of crafting budgets," Nelson says.

Another option being proposed is the issuing of government salary bonds to public-sector workers for this fiscal year.

No interest to unions

However, this has not yet interested the unions, which so far have given "no indication that they will play ball", said the source.

Union leaders have refused to comment on the proposals, waiting instead for a meeting of the board of the Jamaica Confederation of Trade Unions, scheduled for tomorrow.

"The board will meet and I expect that all the options will be placed on the table and they will decide on a course of action," James Francis, president of the United Union of Jamaica, told The Sunday Gleaner.

Francis, like the others, refused to state the position of his union, which represents several government workers.

However, Clifton Brown, president of the Jamaica Workers' Union, has indicated his backing of the proposal for salary bonds to be issued to public-sector workers for this fiscal year.

Monthly interest payments

According to Brown, monthly payment on interest could be made to public-sector workers until the bonds mature over a two- to three-year period.

But Brown will be hard-pressed to convince his colleagues to line up behind him at a time when they argue that inflation last year left their members struggling to survive.

The minister admits that plugging the hole in the public sector wage bill will be a big task, noting that Government will be faced with a 46 per cent increase in the public sector wage bill over two years.

"We cannot manage that; we cannot pay that. We are looking at a movement in the public sector wage bill from $110 billion at March 31, 2009, to $149 billion as at April 1, 2009," Nelson said.