Student’s assessment of work

“I feel like I’m a real employee. I sweat a lot, but I like being busy.” This sentiment from a student working this summer in the private sector. In government jobs in previous summers he “only learned how to look at the watch and wait for lunch time and the end of office hours”. Jacob Villagomez, a JTPA trainee.

This student reaction of work experience in both sectors reflects how we’ve seemingly trained prospective employees to be drone public sector workers. It also points out the difference in on-the-job training in the two sectors where a private sector employee works the clock to earn his day’s salary. This isn’t quite true in the public sector.

It goes without saying that the public sector doesn’t seem to have any meaningful summer training programs for students. Thus, the onset of impressing prospective public sector employees that they need not have to learn a skill and about the only requirement for the job is the savior of being a local. Perhaps this is the very reason that most local job applicants prefer the public sector where perks are high and productivity is warded off.

As a result, we keep turning the term “austerity” into a meaningless slogan. We refuse to inject real substance to such policy only to buffer it with every conceivable golfer’s excuse. We dilly-dally with reality (substantial decline in revenue generation) as though it’s just a passing cotton ball. Well, bureaucrats and politicians must buckle down and listen carefully to the economic pulse of these isles. It isn’t healthy at all!

As such, major reform is needed in the hiring of public sector employees: freeze it for the next ten years. The taxpayers can no longer be forced to shoulder the excesses of politicians and bureaucrats who can’t grasp the defeaning sound of revenue decline.

And with nearly 4,000 employees on the government payroll being paid the collective sum of $600,000 an hour, we should be able to have ultra-efficiency in the delivery of public services from tax breaks for struggling businesses, and a meaningful summer training program for our young people.

As young as Jacob Villagomez may be, his assessment of how most public sector employees go through the course of the day is a sad but true reflection that calls for a change in paradigm so there’s real substance to the phrase “meaningful employment”. We can’t perpetuate the “ke sera” syndrome amidst current reality of the local coffers suffering from severe financial anorexia.

Lest we forget, it is our collective duty to demonstrate to our young people how brighter tomorrows are forged and attained. To start them off as prospective drone public sector employees is far from our vision and commitment to ensuring that each builds and strengthens a set of values premised on proactivity that would enable them to work on productive and meaningful careers. We must change the notion that we can neglect our responsibility to ensure that locals are trained and encouraged to learn lifetime skills. Si Yuus Maase` yan ghilisow!