DailyMirror- Editorial:
President Mahinda Rajapaksa on Monday presented the 2011 budget which was clearly development oriented with long term benefits and the thrust like his second term inauguration speech on Friday, was poverty eradication to such an extent that he hopes the average income of a Sri Lankan by 2016 will be about Rs.40,000 a month. Yet he came to parliament to deliver the budget proposals not with the United People’s Freedom Alliance symbol of a betel leaf but virtually on a white elephant – after the swearing in of yet another widely criticized jumbo cabinet of 60 ministers and 31 deputy ministers.
At the swearing in ceremony, the president warned the Cabinet including 10 senior ministers and deputy ministers not to lose their heads and believe they belonged to an elite class. He reminded them that their main responsibility and commitment was to give selfless sacrificial service and to become servants of the people.
However experience shows us that politicians seldom practise what they preach or is preached to them. Most of them are known to seldom do what they say or say what they do.
As the Daily Mirror stated in an editorial last Saturday on the inauguration speech a vital factor for poverty eradication, is a major structural change to bring about a more equitable distribution of wealth and resources. For this to happen political and other leaders need to enter into a simple and humble lifestyle, learning to be content with basic needs so that they would spend less, save more and share more with those who do not have.
The appointment of a jumbo cabinet and 31 deputy ministers, three days after the inauguration and the tens of millions of rupees spent on maintaining them is certainly not the path leading to poverty eradication.
As for the budget itself, we wish to focus attention on one of the most significant proposals – the Employees’ Pension Fund to be created to provide post retirement pension benefits to employees in the private and corporate sectors with a 2 per cent contribution from employees and a 2 per cent from employers to this fund. According to the budget proposal, the employers will be required to transfer the entirety of the gratuity payment to this fund. Everyone must contribute for a minimum 10 year period to earn a pension. Though basically a good move, many private sector employers and employees have expressed concern over the proposal for the Monetary Board of the Central Bank to take over thousands of millions of rupees in gratuity funds from the private and corporate sectors.
They expressed this concern amid reports that the Central Bank was misusing or virtually gambling with billions of rupees that go to it from the Employees Provident Fund and the Employees Trust Fund. Furthermore the proposal was such that some people who have worked in the private sector for 30 to 40 years may end up or die without gratuity or pension for them or their families. Thankfully the CB governor clarified the position yesterday saying the transfer of gratuity funds would be done only with the written consent of the employee concerned and we hope this would be implemented effectively.