Masters and servants: There’s more

With reference to D. Weerathunga’s letter titled ‘The way we treat our servants’ in the Sunday Times of July 10, I wish to add my two cents worth. 1. Masters are privileged and worshipful during the elections but when servants become Manthrihamuduruwos they become privileged and worshipful and all powerful. 2. Masters make do with houses with minimum rent and facilities while servants live in super luxury mansions provided by the Government. Masters consume the barest minimum of electricity and water while the bills in servants’ mansions run to lakhs. 3. Masters have to admit their children to the closest school to home while servants can admit their children to any prestigious school anywhere in the island. 4. At their workplaces masters eat a packet of rice for Rs. 130 while servants enjoy a meal costing about Rs. 4000 at a five star hotel for only about Rs 200. 5. Masters who enter the Government service have to possess minimum educational qualifications and possess a good character and go through a medical test; servants don’t have to worry about any of them, they need only brawn and a loud, foul mouth. 6. Masters in Government services are strictly bound by the ARR and FRR; servants don’t care two hoots for the standing orders that are supposed to govern them. 7. Masters are liable to dismissal and even imprisonment if they resort to bribery while servants can resort to bribery and corruption with impunity. 8. Masters can’t fight in their workplaces, run about with raised sarongs, attack their opponents, use unsavoury language and hold sit-in protests throughout the night in the august assembly. 9. Masters remanded for any offence have to sleep on a mat; servants get at least a mattress or a bed in the Merchants Ward of the National Hospital. 10. Masters have to account for their wealth while the servants amass wealth but don’t account for it. 11. Masters in the Government service have to work for 10 years to qualify for a pension and wait until 55 years to draw it. Servants who simply warm their seats qualify for a pension after a mere four years and get pension increases every time pensions are revised. 12. Once dismissed from service masters can’t re-enter it, servants can be dismissed (by the masters) and be re-elected any number of times. 13. Masters are compulsorily retired at 60 years of age while servants have no retirement age and can go on till they reach old age senility. S. Abeywicrama Nugegoda