DO POLITICIANS WRITE OWN PAY CHEQUES?

Writing one’s pay cheque is a privilege accorded a few select individuals, like entrepreneurs and business moguls running their own business empires. But looking at our political landscape, it now seems there are certain individuals that also enjoy this privilege - politicians to be more precise.

In his two consecutive terms as PM uMlangeni has seemingly been hard at work, writing his own pay cheque (figuratively speaking, I mean). First, in the fiasco that led to the Waya Waya where the premier and his Cabinet, politicians and Emabandla were found to have gone overboard awarding themselves lucrative perks via Circular No. 1.

In that case, ex-prime ministers were made to join the fray in what now appears to have been tokenism, if one considers the vast difference between what the sitting prime minister would be taking home when his two terms are up.
I mean, how do you justify a salary after retirement of close to E70 000, for the sitting prime minister and the paltry E10 000 that was accorded the ex-prime ministers? It’s a sick joke, if you ask me.  

Like former PM A.T Dlamini would have it, it now seems that certain people are really making sure they retire with dignity. The sad thing about this is that the welfare of his predecessors is not catered for in this instance. The fact that the others who have gone before are not being catered for seems to suggest that the auditors appointed to look into the remuneration of this post, were not focusing on the post, but rather on the individual at the helm at this time, and as a consequence, overlooked other individuals who also needed to retire with dignity, as it is being suggested. While the prime minister emphasises that the auditors were commissioned by His Majesty to conduct this exercise, it is not unreasonable to hold the view that the process was not free from interference by interested parties. I mean, it is only natural to suspect that given that the prime minister is the highest ranking official in this country, consultations must have been made with him.

The other reason that this notion of politicians writing their own pay cheques cannot be dispelled is these exercises were commissioned following an outcry that Cabinet had awarded itself perks. Instead of the review revising perks downward in his case, it actually increased it to include the cars that he was for the first time going to take home, a house, security of all, which were firsts in the history of the country. And now we hear, instead of just taking the one he would be using when retiring, he would be getting an upgrade of his car to that similar to the sitting prime minister. I mean, his perks keep getting better at every turn. This must be making his predecessors green with envy; and rightfully so.

Are we comparable? In the private sector where some of us come from; perks are a function of job grading, that is in turn a function of dimensions (in this case, size of the country - population, size of economy and so on) and accountabilities as relates to budgets and suchlike matter. Given our situation, can we say the setting of the remuneration is justified when benchmarked with others in the region? My simple answer to this is that I am not convinced. 

Listening to a radio interview where they were interviewing the COO of SABC, who has suddenly shot up to fame after crafting the infamous policy censoring news to exclude footage showing destruction of property; I couldn’t  help but laugh when he was confronted with the question that he also signed his own pay cheques.

That was embarrassing, because in the private sector there are clear rules of segregation to guard against this happening. I don’t know about public service though, but I can only assume they also have these checks and balances.

Post your comment

Your name:

Your e-mail address:

Add your comments:

Please enter the code you see in the image:

Image:

Code: