sigh.

It has been a particularly trying 5 days at work so far* – which makes forum pieces like this one on Today’s online site which suggests that the civil service should reduce its salaries while expanding its headcount extra hard to swallow.

hours after reading the article, that there are people out there that think that way makes me feel really.. i don’t know how to describe what i’m feeling, but a part of it is that the suggestions seem rather unjustified.

for one, it seems there might be some confusion over the difference between civil and public servants. also, statutory boards have more generous salary and bonus packages than ministries.

but those are small quibbles. a quick check on Careers@Gov will reveal that there’re lots of positions available in civil service. it’s not a matter of headcount – the civil service is already operating below headcount, without enough people willing or able to join the service.

and why might that be the case? – a rhetorical question, of course. would not the less generous pay package be one reason? there are non-professional private sector employees who get to go home on time. they don’t stay late at work, don’t have to work weekends and don’t have to stay up late completing time-sensitive work (which may be a specific complaint, but what the hell). and they get a tidy sum, which in all likelihoods are tidier than that which civil servants receive.

i don’t see how reducing the pay for civil servants can possibly achieve the writer’s hope for an expansion of the service, when it’s already unable to reach its current headcount. Plus, there are civil servants and there are civil servants – not all are paid on the same scale. the vast majority seriously don’t earn that much, whereas there are some others who may get an exponentially higher amount. Should a pay review for the civil service be conducted, in all likelihood the results will reveal that the bulk of civil servants should in fact get a pay rise.

 

*: today is Friday, so why wasn’t it written as “a particularly trying week”? for the simple, unpleasant reason that there is still work that has to be done over the weekend. lots of it in fact. on top of having already put in almost 6 days worth of work as of today. after dinner today was a full 45min of sitting on the couch, just sitting there on twitter and whatsapp, because there simply wasn’t any energy to move or go shower. to read articles like that…. sigh.