Whatever happened to partnership?

Has local leadership been of any help in staving any further assault on the local economy by the Asian contagion? We wish we could leap out with an answer even if we have to fake it, but the answer is obvious: None at all!

And so most small and midsize businesses, especially tourist related businesses, have decided to muddle through these difficult times, alone. Some have decided to downsize substantially through attrition (reduction in the number of employees) while others have closed shop and headed home or elsewhere.

It is really very troublesome that while most businesses have trimmed excess baggage in order to muddle through, our partner in the public sector has flaunted the deepening crisis with new recruits and treat it with inconsequence. There’s no decisive effort to strike a semblance of responsibility and accountability. It’s a scary attitude that has triggered a troubling query from private sector employees released from work in recent months: Why us, what about them?

The simple message in their expression is crystal clear: If the private sector can bite the bullet however painful, why can’t the public sector follow suit? The undisputed truth in private sector employment is that each works the clock to the hilt to earn his or her day’s pay. It is also the undisputed truth that in government, you work one hour, waste two to three hours at some coffee shop, punch-out at 4:30 p.m., punch-in at 4:35 p.m. for four hours of overtime all spent on the phone, then repeat the same adolescent activity the next day.

With more than 1,754 businesses closed over the last year, it means less revenue generation and less money for the local treasury. This trend will continue to deepen between now and the year 2002. Government money managers would juggle and revise fiscal year budgets more often than is required. Each revisit to their spread sheets releases the usual bad tidings of less revenue to defray the mounting cost of public services.

We still see restructuring of government payscales designed to give civil servants more loot to take home while private sector employees are released from their jobs. Money managers can’t seem to read the sharp decline in revenue generation which obviates the need to freeze all hiring and within grade increases. Travel continues to occur with grand excuses that it’s federally funded. What they fail to say is the hideous manner that travels are taken via the so-called “Journal Voucher”. It means, these travels are subsequently converted and paid for with local funds. Nice try!

The NMI has a long journey to learning how to live within its means in both good and bad times. How unfortunate though that while some have lost their jobs in the private sector via attrition, the “other” sector continues to defy the deepening crisis with more salary increases, new recruits, wasteful spending of taxpayers money on fancy and luxury cars as though the average citizen isn’t wary of how his or her money has being flushed down the tube. Isn’t this supposed to be a partnership?