Hello all. Today’s date, thirty-first January 2014, marks two significant personal landmarks for me. One: This column completes twenty-one years today – its twenty-first anniversary! Two…
So I wanted to be brief in the face of the two celebrations. And rather light-hearted, except the stress of politics, governance, corruption, life’s daily struggles, death and crime.
I’ll try to stick to that preference today, except for my promised (repeated) commentary on the Plight of Our Public Servants.
The Employed Poor Public Servants
They used to be Civil Servants when Guyana was the colonial British Guiana. Independence ushered in the designation “Public” Servants.
They are the “servants” who serve the public through the various Government ministries and numerous related agencies with all manner of names. So, as a simple fundamental fact, we are discussing workers who man, manage and produce for the “serving” (?) elected Government. These are the employees who, virtually and actually keep the government “alive” and working daily!
Should the employer then not accord them full respect and regard? Despite perceived notions of how they “vote” traditionally? (Even the Opposition Leader noted recently that well-paid public employees will not steal easily. And I also suspect that, when in government, Mr Granger will treat his employees much better than Mr Burnham and Mr Hoyte did.)
I first heard the almost-emotive description of local Public Servants as “the employed poor” from Leslie Melville then a senior GPSU executive representative of those same overworked, underpaid employees of all governments. Whether Leslie himself heard it from elsewhere, “employed poor” aptly describes the proud qualified worker ever struggling to make daily ends meet. (Imagine the tragedy of those unemployed poor citizens!)
As another national Budget looms, I recall Melville’s counter to the Jagan/Jagdeo’s justifiable boast, about how much they had improved Public Employees’ wages and salaries after late 1992.
(To Dr Cheddi Jagan’s credit, he had tasked top pro-GPSU economists to help him discover the funding to raise his workers’ pay.)
Melville would illustrate just how inflation mixed with (subtle) devaluation would compromise increases, making them still comparably minimal as the retailers and vendors target workers’ paltry increases.
And when the GPSU pointed to the VAT, other taxes and laughable minimum wages, the government would counter with its own defence of its debt burden, global fuel prices and external protectionism, etc. Always, the overtaxed Public Servants bore the brunt of low rewards.
Much more than pay…
Since this two-year President has just made amiable “sounds” about sitting down with his workers’ union about salaries, I no longer predict any raise in the 2014 Budget. Time is being bought by this public employer.
So I repeat my years-long mantra with respect to this issue. Call it the non-salary necessity.
The employed, underpaid poor usually raise their collective voice pleading for more “take-home pay, more spending power”. But there is no longer any collective leadership, strategic bravery or will to really close down all or most ministries, hospitals, NDC’s or other official agencies to show just who is boss.
So what’s the non-pay alternative(s)? I usually propose that healthy, robust public servants should find some legitimate employment thing to do in their free time. Plant, do hair or sewing, knit, cook – or something to earn!
The government’s investors and employment strategies are tardy and shy. But surely workplaces can do what the lofty Bank of Guyana used to do: Buying Clubs, for staffers. (Well paid employees accessed cheap eggs, milk and other basics). Can’t today’s workplaces buy from wholesalers in bulk? Pass on to staff on certain terms? Why is that beyond us?
Stop “hand-faring!” Buy a blender, sell fruit juices. Unions or a proper TUC should have led the way! Supplement Credit Unions with Buying Clubs. Unions or workplaces could also be innovative with transportation for staff, however limited. Many private sector employers already offer this. How are those medical/health-care schemes being implemented? The local national NIS should not be the only social safety net.
Essentially, I am calling for employers and workers to collaborate on the many non-salary conditions – from land for homes to contributory Buying Clubs and transportational arrangements – as a way to lessen the poor workers’ cost-of-living burdens. Are those practical innovations beyond us?
Lighter, levity, laughter
For the mitigation of our beaten public servants, who get their own back, unfortunately, by malingering or worse – and in recognition of my special day today, I offer one folk proverb and one joke.
Proverb: “Ole” Guana look fuh young leaf” The older iguana prefers younger, greener leaves to feed on. Similarly it is a deepening social reality that many older fellows, post – 50, are seeking (adult) relationships with young ladies not their chronological peers.
As moral judgement is passed, the harsh realities, as young females seeking economic security, father-figures and refuge from young men’s violence, seem to be changing generation-gap restraints. (Pity the fact that those jealous oldsters do harm too.)
Joke: There was this not-so-bright, under-educated Regional Chairman at a District Ceremony with the President in attendance. Determined to please and praise, he repeated ad infinitum: My President did this, my president will take care of that”.
Many bored Opposition folks yawned until the Chairman’s secretary passed him a note saying “Your fly, your pants crotch is open” said the illiterate Chairman: “Yes, my President will take care of that too!”
Still mashing at 21
I’ll return to the imminent 2014 Republic Anniversary celebrations next week but still I ask two basic questions of you citizens: What different, what additional feature would you like the Culture Ministry to spearhead this season? Secondly, do you relate genuinely to the celebratory Mashramani aspect of the anniversary? Why? Why not?
I conclude by thanking you all for staying with this column for twenty-one years. I’ve stressed and conceded that it represents a man-in-the-street perspective, perhaps without the profundity and intellectual analyses of others. But it is here and provocative with certain issues before many gifted others ever do.
Thanks again to you-all and Stabroek News for allowing me to establish this local journalistic record of unbroken continuity.
Guess this…
*1) I was born in the year when: the United Nations was established; when a plane crashed into New York’s Empire State building; when Queen Elizabeth joined the British army as a driver; when Hitler and his wife committed suicide; when World War Two ended; when IBM created the fastest calculator and the IMF and World Bank were established; and when Georgetown’s Assembly Rooms were burnt flat by a great fire on February 23.
In which year was all the above?
‘Til next week! (Comments? allanafenty@yahoo.com)
