Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley will donate his “entire” first month’s salary to the Balisier Fund.
This fund is for the reconstruction of Balisier House.
The announcement was made by Rowley at the People’s National Movement’s (PNM) Eighth General Council meeting at Balisier House, Port-of-Spain, yesterday.
The Prime Minister’s salary is $48,000. In addition, the Prime Minister receives $7,500 duty allowance and $5,550 transport allowance. He also gets a $36,000 cash travel grant, and a maximum motor vehicle loan for $350,000 at six per cent interest, as well as a motor repair loan of $20,000 at six per cent.
This is according to the Salaries Review Commission of July 2009.
In June, former prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said she had donated over $200,000 from her own salary to the Children’s Life Fund over the past five years. During her tenure as prime minister, Persad-Bissessar had been donating ten per cent of her salary, while her ministers donated five per cent.
Yesterday, party chairman Franklyn Khan, now Minister of Rural Development and Local Government, spoke to journalists after the meeting and shared this information.
It was the party’s first meeting since emerging victorious in the September 7 general election.
Khan said, “The Prime Minister also announced, to the applause of the general council, that he will be donating his entire first month’s salary as Prime Minister to the building.
“That’s quite a lot of money, by the way.”
Deputy political leader, policy, Rohan Sinanan will head the Balisier Fund.
Khan said reconstruction should start in 2016. He said there were design options available and depending on the “quantum” of money raised, a design would be selected. He said, “We still have pride as the only political party that has a home, because everybody else is renting and I must go on record to say that the UNC is a tenant or a squatter at Rienzi Complex which belongs to the All Sugar and General Workers’ Trade Union.
“We have our Balisier House.”
Although the building is in a “semi-poor state,” Khan said, the historical architecture would be kept intact.
He said, “We plan to construct a brand new headquarters for the People’s National Movement starting from next year.”
T&T Guardian files stated that Balisier House was acquired sometime in 1959 and became the party’s headquarters in 1960, one year before the general election of 1961.