I totally agree with Randy David on the need to give just compensation for civil servants and it starts with increasing, exponentially in my view, the presidents salary to levels equal to or at least not very far from the big corporations of our country. Otherwise, we deserve the government officials we are ready to pay for. And we must be ready to tolerate corruption. It is not fair to judge people as being overpaid without looking at comparable compensation rates in the private sector for the same positions and responsibilities. The rates for Philippine civil servants, from the president down to the lowest clerk, are just totally unrealistic. Set by law and rarely reviewed, they reflect the enormous guilt that comes from having to govern a society where the people are mostly poor and hungry, more than the huge task that needs to be done in order to get the nation out of poverty and hunger. At the ridiculously low rate at which the presidential compensation is pegged, it is not at all surprising to see his salary surpassed several times over by those of his own appointees to government-owned and -controlled corporations. This doesn’t make sense. One cannot justify this state of affairs by saying that the presidency is its own reward. Less saintly individuals who occupy that position are bound, sooner or later, to compensate themselves in nontransparent ways. But, more than this, consider the structural consequences. Because the salary of the country’s highest public official is pegged at a very low level, the government is unable to adjust the salaries of its public school teachers and university professors to make these competitive. Many are thus tempted to transfer to the private sector or to go abroad, even if this means breaking their contracts with the public institutions that subsidized their graduate training. Those who remain find themselves engaging in various income-generating activities not always complementary to their official work. In this manner does corruption occur in the least expected places, often rationalized in a tone reminiscent of the excuses offered by those who routinely take kickbacks from government projects. Read more: opinion.inquirer.net/76060/just-compensation-for-civil-servants#ixzz360cP3Ze4 Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 07:00:29 +0000
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