Members of the House of Assembly (HOA) more than doubled most of their salaries, by up to 145%, in an undisclosed informal vote days before the passage of the 2024 budget, according to a damning report from the Auditor General that also explored a $20 million shortfall in funding for public service salary increases.
The audit report, dated May 27, 2025, found that HOA members approved their own salary increases based on a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recommendation, but not at the minimum level originally costed by the consultants. Instead, legislators implemented the maximum salary scale, raising the total annual emoluments from $681,000 to nearly $1.5 million without any formal disclosure or public debate.
For example, the Premier’s salary jumped from $72,000 to $176,243, while regular members of the House saw increases from $36,000 to $71,230. The raises took effect January 1, 2024, following an informal meeting on December 19, 2023. The salary increases were quietly implemented through existing budget provisions, without public explanation of the financial implications.
The Auditor General, Sonia M. Webster, noted that this lack of transparency raises serious questions of accountability.
The audit also found that the broader public service salary review, launched to address long-overdue pay adjustments, was vastly undercosted. Despite notions that actual figures would need to be quantified by the Ministry of Finance, the Government relied on PwC’s estimate of $9.4 million. Internal projections from the Ministry of Finance pegged the actual cost closer to $27.7 million, a figure that was not disclosed to Cabinet when funding was approved.
Despite the initial estimate, actual expenditure on salaries in 2024 reached $120.8 million, up from $91.8 million in 2023, resulting in a shortfall exceeding $20 million. The government was forced to reallocate funds and issue supplementary appropriations to cover the gap.
“The absence of a reliable, independent estimate to support the figures contributed to discrepancies between projections and actual expenditures,” the report stated. “There were indications that the cost of the implementation would be substantially higher than the Consultants’ estimates, but this information was not presented when the decision was brought before Cabinet.”
The report recommends that both the Deputy Governor’s Office and the Ministry of Finance provide a formal explanation for why the higher cost estimates were not disclosed. It also calls for full public disclosure of the HOA salary increases and their impact on retirement benefits, especially in light of recent amendments to the pension framework for elected officials.