On September 9, Asis Gajadien, leader of the VHP parliamentary faction, submitted an urgent formal request to Suriname’s President Jennifer Geerlings-Simons, calling for a temporary hold on a planned 15 percent salary adjustment for the Director of General Administration. The core goal of this request is to prevent the pay raise from triggering automatic incremental salary increases for the president and other senior political officeholders, a consequence that would stem from existing statutory linkage rules embedded in current public administration law.
Gajadien has emphasized that his appeal does not target salary adjustments for general civil servants across the public sector. He confirmed that the planned 15 percent pay increase for all other eligible public employees should proceed in full as scheduled. The request exclusively targets the Director of General Administration position due to its unique legal pay linkage to the presidency, a structural connection that has sparked calls for reform.
The parliamentarian sent the urgent letter to the president on Wednesday, routed through Ashwin Adhin, Speaker of the National Assembly (DNA). Under the current legal framework, the president’s official salary is explicitly tied to the pay level of the Director of General Administration. Any adjustment to the director’s pay therefore automatically flows through to the presidency, and under additional separate legal provisions, the change then cascades to set pay for all other political officeholders across the government.
Gajadien argues that this automatic statutory linkage is no longer aligned with principles of good governance. He pointed out that during parliamentary deliberation on the Law on Monetary Provisions for the President, he already proposed amending the legislation to set the president’s salary as a fixed, explicit monetary amount in statute, rather than keeping it dependent on the pay of a career civil service position.
Currently, a private member’s bill is being prepared to permanently end this automatic cross-linked pay system. If passed, the legislation will set the president’s salary as a specific, legally defined amount. Going forward, any salary adjustments for other public administration roles would only serve as an indicative reference point, and would no longer trigger automatic indexing of the presidency’s pay or that of other political officeholders.
Pending parliamentary review and approval of this reform bill, Gajadien is asking the president to issue a resolution to temporarily suspend the 15 percent salary adjustment for the Director of General Administration. This temporary pause would prevent the automatic cascading pay increases for the president and other linked political positions from taking effect ahead of the planned legal change.
Once the private member’s bill is debated and approved, Gajadien notes that the Director of General Administration’s salary can be adjusted in line with general public sector salary trends as planned, without the change automatically impacting the pay of political officeholders.
The VHP faction leader added that the temporary hold would leave the existing legal foundation for the pay system fully intact during the transition period. He has asked the president to consider his request in the broader public interest, citing commitments to greater transparency, proper public administration, and a careful, orderly legal transition to the new pay framework.