“The maximum salary a government employee would get is Rs. 80000 per month” says the new 6th pay commission. It is a party time for all our government employees with salary increments announced being around 50% and more. The new 6th pay commission drafted out new salary figures for government servants and all this is going to cost our government a whopping Rs. 12500 crore – a small amount if we were to total the number of scams, frauds, and ill practices that the politicians proudly execute. However, certainly a huge amount if we were to consider the extent of development we can do to our country. Add to this the new packages will be applicable from June 2006 thus paying these fat politicians fat arrears.
Well I am not against anyone deserving, getting rewarded proportionately. For e.g. considering the corporate structure, the IIM and IIT grads can very well command such salaries as their outputs are commendable and certainly contributing for some betterment. For government employees though such amount rather looks very absurd, as there is very little amount of work our government does – we all can see it right? Moreover, they have servant-filled apartments, vehicles on demand, free telephones, discounted travel, pension, and other ‘under-the-table’ benefits. Yet the greed never ends. Considering the inflation and so on yes some increment can be considered but the kind of work (or no work) that they do it’s certainly a NO.
While concentrating on increasing the pay packages, the government should also take into account recruiting qualified professionals who can apply vision and rationale for development and bringing about change. Statistics show that last pay commission (5th one in 1996) was a major blunder to the extent that running day-to-day administrative operations of the state and center had become difficult near to impossible. To cover for the pay hikes, costs in areas of agriculture, education, healthcare, and infrastructure were compromised on. And it would be a tiring journey to recover from these costs. Imagine the kind of work that can be done with that 12000 crore.
No problem in paying them good salaries but hopefully we at least get satisfactory basic necessities in return. No work and foul play is not at all making this Jack a dull boy – cheers to government employees, and I always thought they are servants ;-)
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