Ministers hit back at Colm over 10% wage offer critique

Two Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters are tak­ing aim at for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, over what they call “false” and “mis­lead­ing” state­ments about the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) of­fer to pub­lic ser­vants.

The con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2026 Bud­get, when Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo an­nounced that the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer (CPO) had been in­struct­ed to be­gin wage ne­go­ti­a­tions with unions based on a 10 per cent start­ing point.

Im­bert, now a se­nior Op­po­si­tion MP, was quick to dis­miss the an­nounce­ment as “the biggest ma­m­aguay of all,” sug­gest­ing that the fig­ure was be­ing used to de­ceive pub­lic sec­tor work­ers in­to be­liev­ing they were be­ing of­fered more than they ac­tu­al­ly were.