President orders review of CB‘s outrageous pay hike
The President on Monday appointed a committee to review the scandalous raise in salaries of all Central Bank employees by its Governor Nandalal Weerasinghe, who used his newfound independent spoon to serve themselves a massive chunk of glorious sunshine while everyone else lay condemned under a pall of economic gloom, with the President still on the burning rope bridge urging restraint and calling all to tighten their belts.
The huge increase, which made a peon’s pay equal a doctor’s salary and rewarded its top tier for no particular meritorious feat with handsome increments of nearly a million bucks each, outraged the nation. It was done in great secrecy and only revealed in February after staff had already taken their bulging January bonanzas home.
As Ranil Wickremesinghe’s former Finance Minister in the Yahapalana Government Ravi Karunaratne said last week: “There was no absolute necessity to have granted super salary increases to Central Bank staff. There are no special humans there but normal men as in other institutions. There are other places too which have people just as clever and capable as those at the Central Bank. The Governor says it had to be increased but that is what everyone else says at their own places. Granting only themselves a massive pay hike is an inhumane act. They should realise it is done with taxpayers’ money and not from a special reserve.”
Two weeks ago Governor Nandalal again defended his decision for over-thetop salary hikes and declared he will not resign. He said: ‘I don't think we need to wait until the economy stabilises to raise wages.’
Exactly. While the Central Bank’s resources to award bomber increases for its glorified staff to merely flog a stringent IMF’s tutorial dictates of monetary discipline, can be met by its own money printing machine, the rest, alas, must perforce wait for economic skies to clear and a rainbow to shine.
But blinkered to the beggary that has embroiled the rest, Governor Nandalal still has the impertinence to say: ‘This salary increases has been done under the existing legal framework.’
The Independent Remuneration Committee that has been appointed following SJB MP Harsha de Silva’s recommendation in his COPE report, should seriously consider if it is to be of any legitimate value, whether merely because one has the legal right to serve oneself a thumping dollop of icing on one’s already enriched cake, it is ethically right or downright vulgar to insensitively do so when the rest are denied their bread?