– but now questions $1.2M paid to current office holder
Leader of the Opposition, Joseph Harmon said the $1.2M paid to the Head of the Project Management Office, Dr. Marlon Bristol is nothing compared to the salary paid to the previous head under the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration.
During Monday’s consideration of the 2020 Budget’s Estimates and Expenditures, it was revealed that Dr. Bristol, while serving as Head of the Project Management Office, received a monthly salary of $1.2M.
Harmon, who had served as Minister of State under the A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Administration, said the Head of the Project Management Office was paid a whopping $3M monthly under the PPP/C Administration. He explained that when the APNU+AFC took Office in 2015, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), was funding the Office, however, the Government took over when those funds ran out.
He iterated that when Dr Bristol was hired, he was paid almost 50 per cent less than his predecessor, notwithstanding his qualifications, experience and the tasks ahead. “Dr. Marlon Bristol, is well researched; he is well written; [and] anyone can go on the internet to see the quality of his work,” the Opposition Leader posited.
The Project Management Office, which falls under the purview of the Office of the President, works closely with the Office of Climate Change (OCC), the Department of the Environment (DoE) and other agencies to ensure the implementation of programmes and projects related to the REDD+ platform. The Opposition Leader, in dismissing claims by the Government that Dr. Bristol was over paid, credited the success of the Project Management Office, to him.
“He has brought a quality of performance to that Office, which allowed the Norwegians to compliment us for the management of these projects; which allowed us to complete the Green State Development Strategy, which is now a matter of public record,” Harmon posited.
Bristol’s salary as head of the Office of Project Management became the subjection of discussion after a question was posed by a Government Member to the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance, Gail Teixeira.
Harmon said this new trend of Government questioning itself is intended to embarrass the main Opposition. “The PPP Members of Parliament chose to use a device in which they ask their own Ministers questions, which they felt would embarrass us as an APNU+AFC coalition,” he said, while nothing that the PPP/C Administration is providing the nation with half-truths.
This trend, he said, is likely to continue and Guyanese must be alert. “The PPP will be asking themselves questions and then put out the answer in the public domain as though that is what the situation is. So, I am alerting the general public to this particular ploy on the part of the PPP in the National Assembly so that they can get out information there, which they feel would embarrass us, but really what it is doing, it is showing a different quality of management of the resources of this country, and a different quality of governance, which we practiced than what the PPP in their 23 years, and the continuation of that 23 years, after the 2nd of August, 2020.
