Opinion
Pay-hike and price-hike
Abu Imran
For quite sometime, the government had been exercising on the issue of allowing the overdue pay-hike to its employees. The formation of pay-commission, its recommendations and finally its approval and implementation -- are all soothing and welcome news at least for the employees under the Republic since the pay they are allowed is perhaps the lowest compared to other regional countries. Perhaps keeping this and very high inflation rate in view the pay has considerably been raised. This shall surely help them fight out the inflation which has crossed all the limits over the past half a decade.No doubt a bulk of the working people will be benefited as the government is one of the biggest employers. But what about the condition of the employees in the private sector and those self-employed poor wage earners? They have become seriously affected because of the conventional back lash that go with such pay-hike. It influenced the price-hike in three stages: (1) When the idea of pay-hike was conceived at the government level, that lured the traders to increase the price. This is also because the government has no control over the price-hike. Perhaps it is also because the government has no moral strength to ask others not to go for price-hike because the government itself often increases the prices of some commodities ignoring the inconvenience of common people. The increases in the rates of electricity, gas and petrol, oil and lubricant is a glaring reference. That gave a strong plea to the private businessmen. (2) Next time the prices went up when the pay commission formulated its recommendations and presented it to the government and, (3) The third time the prices went up when the government announced approval for implementation of the pay commission's recommendations. As a result now the prices have sky-rocketed, which is every body's common experienced except of the big guys who have lot of money and the high ups who have to bother little or not at all with the market prices. As the price-hike has affected the majority badly, it is the duty of the government to address it because, it is the fallout of the action taken by the government in the form of allowing pay-hike to the government employees. To minimise the sufferings, the government can take the following measures to help the wage earners in the private sector: 1) Ask the private employers to enhance the pay of their employees at least by 50 percent so that somehow they can fight the high prices now obtaining in the market. 2) To help the private employers, the government may allow incentive/relief in the form of concession on duty/taxes/levies/VAT etc. so that they are also compensated when they would enhance the pay/allowance of their employees. 3) Any other measure that may help fight the inflation by the working class people. With the above measures, it is expected that more people may be brought under the pay-hike net and thereby greater good to the greater number may be done which is the normal expectation from an elected democratic government. Abu Imran is a former government official.
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