Well over a year ago we drew the attention of the New Direction government that prides itself as a listening government to the fact that there were unacceptable gaps in emoluments little knowing then that our knowledge of the real facts was scanty. Since then we have learnt that the gaps had been growing heedlessly wider.
Shall the New Direction government ever reduce the gaps? It’s unlikely according to present trends. Will any nation achieve a status whereby the gaps between the salary scales of the lowest and highest earners become negligible? That is the intriguing question. The next best thing to closing the gaps is to bring awareness to the government. The present minimum wage of Le600,000 (six hundred thousand Leones) has not been considered as being anywhere near a living wage considering the present cost of living.
Since the dawn of the Greek City States various forms of government have attempted to work towards egalitarianism. These attempts have been crippled by greed, selfishness and lack of morality, among other negative human characteristics. Socialism which sought to bring some degree of equality in society has been tried and has not been successful in spite of its grand and noble ideals even in its ‘mother’ countries of experimentation namely the former Soviet Union, USSR and China and there have been stark violations of the ideal by their leaders. And there are creeping reversals to capitalism in those states. This is all because Socialism is an organism and not a machine to be guided by the dictatorship of the proletariat. The disruption of Socialism by Benito Mussolini that ‘Socialism is a fake, a comedy, a phantom, and a blackmail,’ is relevant here.
What we have been practicing here in Sierra Leone and in other developing countries is virtually ‘Africanism,’ a curious mix of Capitalism and Socialism that has led to our retrogression. It is in essence unequal pay for equal work instead of the standard of equal pay for equal work.
The leader of the Grand Alliance, Dr. Kandeh Yumkella, is one patriotic person who has warned the government to beware of expenditures and the levying of huge taxes on the private sector. The fact is that the Bio government has not been seen to make a radical break from the Old Direction in spite of the chant of New Direction.
Recent revelations from State House indicate that we are virtually living in two worlds namely the SLPP world of haves and the proletarian world of have-nots. The gulf between the two worlds is unimaginable judging from the pronouncements and manifestos of the SLPP before their accession to power. Oh dear!
When one considers the income earner, the schedule of duties and quantum of money earned, one is mentally transported into an Alice in Wonderland world.
In the first place it is necessary to know whether the budget for State House comes not from the Consolidated Revenue Fund but from the private purse of the Head of State. If it comes from the state funds then it is gross dereliction of duty by the Finance Ministry for which that Ministry should immediately be held culpable. This ugly situation affirms Shakespeare’s statement that ‘’foul deeds will rise.‘’ In other words the State House bubble has been burst.
Few in this ‘’land that we love’’ would ever believe that a cook in this Republic could earn Le21 million a month while the Principal of a senior secondary school earns Le2 million a month, a tenth of a State House cook. At the apex there are civil servants like the Financial Secretary who is earning Le86.2 million a month. Hm! Are we living in the same republic and receiving salaries from the same government source?
In response to the exposure which the Ministry of Finance thought would be a state secret they issued a completely nonsensical press release that affirmed rather than countered the damaging exposure. It were better for them to have refrained from issuing any release with regard to that topic. A revolutionary leader would have cut down those astronomical salaries as exploitation of the tax payers and nobody would have counter mended it. Instead it has been with his tacit concurrence all the way.
The World Bank and IMF have no business in how individual emoluments are disbursed. It is an internal affair determined by our governors who can be saviors or sadists. We have now seen that our incumbent governors are real sadists caring only for their main supporters and regarding the rest of the populace as hewers of wood and drawers of water. At this rate of nepotic wastage we are very likely to be saddled with more debt than that left by the APC at the end of this misrule. Even staunch SLPP supporters if they are true to themselves cannot support such senseless disparities and wastage.
Unawares, we have been dealing with wolves in sheep’s clothing but the unmistakable pores of the wolf have begun to appear so that we should brace up. With every passing day President Bio is ensuring that he is a one-term President like the last President of Ghana. He is not qualified to talk about reckless spending. He is damaging his reputation in such a way that by 2023 he will be a write-off.