It is common place nowadays to always hear talk about the pay hike that was brought about effective 1st Feb 09, and the inevitable pay cut that civil servants are to face effective 1st of September 09. However, the Civil Service Commission is yet to come up with a figure on how much of a pay cut we are talking about.
All civil servants are pretty much concerned about this pay cut for obvious reasons. This couldn’t have happened at a worse time when the month of Ramazan is just about to begin, during which we Maldivians tend to go crazy spending on food, entertainment and basically as usual live beyond our means, just a tad more so than usual.
Talks keep going on in various corners. Most of us do not even want to stop for a moment and think, goodness me, yes this would have been a tough decision for the cabinet to reach. I mean even if you stop to think for a second, you would know that no ruling government whether it be DRP or MDP or whatever PP it is at the moment, wouldn’t want the bad publicity of being the ones who cut down on the salaries of more than 24,000 of the population when it was just a couple of months ago that they were happy to announce of a pay ‘increase’. Some might term it as politically motivated, I don’t want to delve into that, but the point I would actually like to make here is where the heck is the responsibility of the civil servants to try and serve the country to the best of their ability and give it the maximum they have got?
I mean even where I work, there is this one guy, who works at the supervisory level and is almost NEVER around. He breezes into work at eight, loiter around his desk for a bit and then just disappears. His subordinates have no idea half the time of where he might be, his supervisor just gets an sms on his mobile stating half the illnesses in the world are after his ass and he has to go see this & that specialist but in reality, he has his own little business that’s thriving which needs 100% of his time and attention for it to function well.
I mean come on! Does he also has to receive a fat check at the end of the month, at governments cost, for being a VERY irresponsible civil servant? Does he really deserve the pay that he is receiving while he wanders around conducting his own business affairs? I mean people, be REALISTIC. If you want the right to criticize every little thing that affects the civil servants or the public servants as a whole, then at least be responsible enough to be around at your workplace from 8-4. Then you might just ‘earn’ the right to strut around voicing your opinions about the current state of affairs affecting the civil servants to anyone who is willing to listen.
As for me, I can’t abide by these types of workers. Its high time we got rid of em’ and I will applaud (quite loudly in fact) on the day these undeserving civil/public servants get the boot.