Greece’s economy failed due to the cooking of books and embedded corruption and tax evasion – this is clear. But when the country’s successive governments decided to try and reassemble a collapsed economy, they found that one of the major issues which affected productivity was half days.
The issue has now been raised on a local level by the President of the Chamber of Commerce and Enterprise, Tancred Tabone. In comments given to The Times, Mr Tabone said that the “generous wage increase” for public servants was ill-timed. He pointed out that this was happening on the eve of a general election and that it contrasts sharply with what is happening in the rest of Europe, in that civil servants are accepting pay cuts and not pay increases. He said that the collective agreement which was signed would have been a perfect platform to “abolish the half days which today are widely considered a luxury the country cannot afford”.
He is right. Many will support his way of thinking. It is not that people begrudge others being given an increase – the issue at stake here is that people will be getting paid more in a sector that is often characterised by rudeness, inefficiency, poor customer service, appalling premises (for citizens) and the most important thing of all, lack of productivity.
There are a good number of civil servants who work hard and perform well – often beyond the shift time of their half days. But the truth is that the sector is bloated and there are far too many people sitting around doing nothing and being paid for it while others make up for the shortfall in productivity. To see people of this calibre enjoying half days in the summer just adds insult to injury.
Yes, half days should definitely go, but the issue cannot just stop there. The government needs to continue to trim the civil service, to get rid of the deadwood. It must also employ people of quality, and not just take on any old person – normally those who have connections.
In addition, people actually have to be put to work. It is infuriating to see the amount of people who hang around in government departments and do not do much at all; such an attitude has long been eradicated in the private sector, and so it should be in the civil service.
Getting people to do some work might sound like an achievement in itself, but work alone is not satisfactory. People who are employed in the civil service must start giving a good quality service to the end user – Joe Public, the citizen. It is the citizens who pay the wages and salaries of those in the civil service, and their performance should reflect this.
On a final note, people (including employers and unions) are irked that the deal was struck close to a general election, when the government is under pressure to acquiesce to demands. Moreover, while there is a declaration stating that the deal will not affect the country’s deficit, there is no actual explanation of how this is going to be achieved. The citizen is still smarting at the huge utility bills we are faced with, in order to make up for the shortfall at Enemalta. Making up for a shortfall in government revenue to pay for a bloated, rude and inefficient civil service is just not acceptable.