BDF Salary Adjustments From 2019 to Be Resolved by August

The announcement of the allowances came with the report that the soldiers will finally see the 2019 salary adjustments be rectified for all soldiers, with full effect in August.   This has been a long-time issue as it was discovered that the previous administration had made multiple errors in applying the new salaries.  In some cases, soldiers were overpaid, which brought up an additional concern about whether they would have to return the monies to the government.  Minister Mira spoke with Love News to clarify the decision on salaries and to eliminate the misinformation being spread on other public platforms.

Oscar Mira, Minister of National Defense and Border Security: “There were some so it’s not all of the BDF but there were some BDF soldiers who were put on the wrong salary scale. It wasn’t underpaid, they were being overpaid. The previous administration did not correct it and just left it like that and now we’re noticing that there are some soldiers and it mostly was the non commissioned officers so the privates, the lance corporals, corporals and sergeants and some staff sergeants who were being overpaid. Now we had to correct it at some point in time. When we got into government we did a big exercise to study and to see who all were affected and by how much. That was being done and every time we tried to rectify it something came up and it is a very complex exercise to do. When I got appointed as the Minister of National Defense and Border Security I made a priority and I called my CEO and said listen this needs to be corrected. But in order for us to correct this let us lobby Cabinet, let us ask Cabinet to please have the soldiers not pay back whatever extra salaries they had gotten. Government and Cabinet had agreed and said listen it wasn’t the soldier’s fault, this was a fault done by the Ministry of Finance we will correct it and in doing so we will allow whatever extra these soldiers got to be done as an ex gratia payment. So we lobbied Cabinet, Cabinet agreed. In August when their new salary is deposited they will see that all of those that had been being overpaid will go back to the salary that they should be on. It should not affect any calculations on your benefits if you retire or for your retirement purposes. So that isn’t supposed to be affected.” 

The decision for the salary adjustments came following a March 26 meeting between representatives from the Ministry of Finance, the Treasury Department, and the Ministry of National Defence and Border Security.  Since then, the Treasury Department has been instructed to have the decision reflected in future salaries.