The Cabinet Office wishes to advise that a notice circulating on social media related to the lump sum payment of $1,400 due to public servants in the December 2019 pay period is false.

The notice should be disregarded. It is untrue.

Lump sum payments will be paid as scheduled in December to all public servants, PHA staff, doctors, nurses, teachers, members of the Royal Bahamas Police Force, the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, and Bahamas Customs, Immigration and Correctional Officers.

THE government is looking to raise the minimum wage in the public sector to at least $300 per week, Labour Director John Pinder said yesterday. He said internal discussions have revolved around raising the minimum wage to between $300 and $350 for government workers. Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis announced the forthcoming increase last week. However, the exact plans have not yet been revealed. Mr Pinder said it is hoped the government’s increase will lead the private sector to follow suit. “The government always aims to lead by example and be the benchmark,” he said. “We hope the private sector would follow. We’ve been discussing it for some time at the National Tripartite Council but there has been no conclusion.” Mr Pinder said about ten percent of public service workers are making minimum wage. There are about 20,000 government workers. He said the minimum wage increase is necessary because of rising costs of living. Mr Pinder said the National Tripartite Council has been discussing creating a living wage: a wage high enough to maintain a strong standard of living. However, the council has disagreed on what the living wage should be, he said.

BAHAMAS Power and Light customers will pay for the company’s rate reduction bond for the next 20 years to bail-out the company – but the highest increase in electricity bills is only expected to last through 2020, according to Works Minister Desmond Bannister. Mr Bannister, closing debate on the Electricity Rate Reduction Bill 2019 in the House of Assembly, said when the bonds are placed customers will pay the fee for the life of the bond, which is 20 years. However the highest payments will only be the $20 to $30 dollar increase to electricity bills, for 10 months next year. “The proposed rate reduction bond will be longer (20 years) than what is available to BPL in commercial banking markets (typically less than five years). This means the cost of debt service is spread out over time and is eventually outweighed by operational cost savings from the capital expenditure that is funded by the rate reduction bond. This minimises the cost impact on customers and indeed allows customers tariffs to be reduced over time,” he said.

For at least a few hours, 10 presidential candidates did their best to wrest the attention of American voters away from the ongoing impeachment hearings that have dominated national headlines for weeks. First, however, they had to address the elephant in the room. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a front-runner and one of the first candidates to suggest Donald Trump should be impeached, said she would try to convince Republican senators to vote to remove the president by telling them to view the latest revelations about Ukraine as part of what she said was Mr Trump's ongoing lawlessness. She added a plug for her anti-corruption plan, which includes a proposal to ban big campaign donors (like Gordon Sondland, the star of the day's impeachment hearings) from being named ambassadors.

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