Prime Minister has been forthright in her rejection of the cabinet colleagues' demand that they be given the privilege of importing duty-free cars. It is patently unreasonable when they get official transports befitting their positions and functions. They are perceived to be driven by the thought of material acquisition, not any principle, when they asked for a privilege in addition to perks and privileges they already have. As high elected functionaries of the government, if anything, they are only expected to be alive to public sensibilities and set examples of austerity and sacrifice.
The ministers may perhaps look around to see for themselves how their counterparts in neighboring India are traveling in economy class. Their perks and allowances have also been cut. It is worthwhile to note that the conservative government in UK is currently engaged in cost-cutting measures across the board in order to fully regain its feet after the global recession. This should be an object lesson for a country like ours, whose economy is striving for a breakthrough, primarily in the interest of the majority who are poor. Mr. David Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in a speech last September said, "There is no need for 171 of these cars to be on hand for every government minister, whip - and indeed, myself. In these economic times, when everyone is making their own sacrifice, this number cannot be justified.
So the Conservatives will cut the budget for official government cars by a third". Mr. Chris Mullin was MP for Sunderland south of the United Kingdom from 1987 to 2010. The first volume of his diaries, A View from the Foothills, was published last year where he has mentioned the followings: Of course, it is not only ministers who are entitled to official cars. Senior civil servants and goodness knows how many generals, admirals and air marshals and many more in the cash-strapped Ministry of Defense are also ferried about by the Government Car Service. In my experience, they are likely to cling to the perks of office rather more tenaciously than most ministers. It also remains to be seen how the proposed reforms will work in practice. My guess is that they will meet with considerable resistance. It can only be a question of time before someone leaves official papers on a train and I predict this will be used as an excuse to try and re-open the entire issue. Political will is going to be needed to make the reforms stick.
Here in Bangladesh, we have ministers, state and deputy ministers and advisors numbering nearly 80 out of 330 member of parliament and each minister enjoys a motorcade of three to five on average (maybe a little less) and armed guards and vehicles for wives for shopping, kids for schooling and so on. On top of that each MP in given a duty-free car (duty here is 300% for a normal citizen).
Gopal Sengupta
Canada
gopalsengupta@aol.com
Learning lessons from others
FE Team | Published: July 07, 2010 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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