Page 90 - Gilbert & Me_Neat

Going back to yesterday’s news broadcast. There’s a discussion in the House about the
Government proposing to extend the State of Emergency to sixty more days. SIXTY!
Unsurprizingly the Opposition argue that’s too long, and counter with a thirty day extension.
They lose. So the country is heading for another sixty days of curfew and virtual national
lockdown, which I find totally bewildering because, there’s been no increase in cases or deaths,
in fact, more people who tested positive for the virus are recovering. So it would seem we have
beaten the spread of the virus. Yet, we are still being told to stay home.

And there’s no plan to increase testing, so that the Ministry of Health can definitively say the
spread has slowed or even been halted so far. The PM says during an interview, that money is a
concern. He claims that there’s more money on the way, but, regardless, he will not entertain the
thought of public sector workers receiving a pay cut. Regular citizens are losing their jobs all
over the country, businesses are going bust and families are struggling, but the public sector will
not suffer.

Typical.

Of course, the reason is clear – if ‘regular’ public sector workers have to endure a pay cut, there
would be no reason for politicians and others to be left out of the national effort to reduce
Government spending, and there’s absolutely NO WAY that ANY politician is going to give up
any of their salary. Or allowances. So, Barrow’s number one priority is to ensure that public
sector workers’ salaries remain untouched by the crisis. Now, I understand about frontline
workers not being impacted. Absolutely. Doctors, nurses and the defence forces must be
protected, but just about everybody else should be sharing in the national effort.

I should, perhaps, declare that I’m not a keen supported of the public sector generally speaking.
From my personal experience, I find most public sector workers to be lazy, arrogant and self-
centered. These people have jobs for life. They can’t be fired – even if they are useless at their
jobs – and look down upon the rest of society, even though it’s us that pay their wages. This is
mostly because a significant number of these public sector employees got their jobs by ‘knowing
somebody’ rather than by merit. This means, if they were to lose their jobs, through poor
performance for example, that ‘somebody’ would be embarrassed as well. Often that ‘somebody’
is a minister or senior executive within that same department.

Government of Belize
A.N.Y
Cashier DEPARTMENT
?! 8am – 4pm