Reliance on government jobs

The Issue: Local reliance on public sector jobs has its own history of ill-conceived measures for years.

Our View: Reform is needed to cut down perks, i.e., retirement and other royal benefits padded by politicians.

For years, politicians and bureaucrats have used the minimum wage issue to get ahead with public sector employees. The saddest part of this undertaking is the total neglect of the consequences of building up the public sector at the expense of the private sector.

It’s the government mentality that we can willfully impose statutory salary raises and other perks without ensuring that public sector employees earn their stripes. It’s a legacy well-learned from the US Department of Interior.

This well-learned though superficially errant attitude by local politicians and bureaucrats must have been taken for granted during the first seven years of guaranteed funding under the Covenant. Rather than use it to promote thrift and entrepreneurship, we funneled most of it into unearned salary raises for public sector employees. In the process, we have encouraged locals to look at public sector jobs as the sole holy grail of success. In other words, why work to earn your dues when it’s handed down every other full moon.

In the process, politicians learned how to fuel the political patronage system where failures are grandly and handsomely rewarded, i.e., unskilled workers getting more money annually than those who have sacrificed and earned their college degrees. As such, the so-called community worker (who ferries picnic tables and canopies) is paid more than a teacher with a BA degree. In short, we are our own worst enemy for our apparent inability to stay focus and work things out based on a merit system. It’s the spoiler system that has been and still is in place all over the public sector. This obviously requires resolution albeit difficult, politically.

As a result of local politicians’ penchant to employ the baseless minimum wage issue to secure re-election, it should sufficiently dawn on local leadership that this issue has hardened the belief among locals that a non-productive public sector job is their future. This attitude needs major overhauling to enable locals to look at private sector jobs as a starting point on the long road to success. It is up to local leadership to find alternatives other than the constant padding of salaries of highly unproductive public sector workers.

The NMI cannot perpetuate promoting the notion that a public sector job is the real definition of success. It must inculcate the notion that a private sector job is a good starting point for meaningful employment. This historical anomaly must go for we have actually allowed our people to rely on politicians to hand them unearned salary increases and other perks private sector employees must earn through sheer hard work. Si Yuus Maase`!