Oxygen support

Wednesday 28th July, 2021

Those who do not believe in miracles will be hard put to explain why Sri Lanka is still behind India and Indonesia anent the pandemic death toll, given the extremely irresponsible behaviour of its people and rulers. Delta is deadlier and more transmissible than all other coronavirus variants and spreading fast here. But there are street protests, where nobody cares about the Covid-19 protocol.

Hospitals are struggling to cope with the increasing number of Covid-19 patients, most of whom are said to need oxygen support. This is certainly bad news which all those who have lowered their guard should take cognizance of.

The government has met the representatives of protesting teachers’ unions, at last. Their talks have ended inconclusively, but the government agrees in principle that teachers’ demand for better pay is justifiable. There is no gainsaying that the government teachers deserve a better deal, and nobody will object to a pay hike for them although there are many shirkers among them. But the question is whether this is the right time for salary increases in the public sector. The economy is also on oxygen support. True, the blame for this situation should be apportioned to all those who have been in power for the past several decades, but one has to come to terms with the ground reality.

Pay hikes for public servants mean tax increases and the aggravation of the woes of the public struggling to keep the wolf from the door. Indirect taxes (paid by all people) account for about 85 percent of the state tax revenue. This, however, does not mean those who deserve pay hikes should be denied them indefinitely. On the other hand, the government blundered by ordering duty-free luxury vehicles for the MPs and thereby making the public wonder whether its claim of being cash-strapped was true. Sanity prevailed, and the controversial vehicle order was suspended owing to protests. It also made a huge mistake by increasing doctors’ allowances and undertaking to grant the nurses’ demand for a pay hike; this ill-advised action prompted other state employees to resort to trade union action to win similar demands.

Meanwhile, it is heartening that the government has paid off a one-billion-dollar bond debt a couple of days before the deadline. State Minister of Money and Capital Market and State Enterprises Reforms, Ajith Nivard Cabraal’s announcement yesterday that the country had honoured its debt obligation may have disappointed those who expected their prediction of a sovereign default to come true. Some investors believed in that prognosis, panicked and suffered staggering losses. Minister Cabraal rubbed salt into the wound; he tweeted, “The bond investors who panicked due to rating actions and analyst reports and sold off at huge discounts must be regretting’. The situation, however, is far from rosy; there are more debts to be serviced and more forex is needed for that purpose; it is not feasible for the government to go on dipping into its foreign exchange reserves, which will have to be shored up urgently. But the aforesaid payment will help boost investor confidence and avert further credit rating downgrades. A prerequisite for tackling the debt crisis is to overcome the national health crisis and reopen the country fully as soon as possible so that the forex inflow will improve with expected increases in exports and tourist arrivals.

If the pandemic takes a turn for the worse, and the economy collapses, those who are demanding pay hikes and protesting to win that demand, will not get even their salaries; everyone will have to starve. This is what those who are facilitating the transmission of Covid-19 by staging street protests ought to bear in mind. Their processions will make it well-nigh impossible for the country to be reopened fully any time soon. What moral right will the protesting teachers who blatantly violate the quarantine laws and are seen trying to pull down gates have to tell their pupils to behave and follow the health guidelines when schools reopen?

The government must also act responsibly without provoking trade unions. It should have invited the warring unions for talks much earlier instead of having their leaders rounded up and packed off to faraway quarantine centres, and postponed the presentation of the Kotelawala Defence University Bill, which cannot be considered a national priority by any stretch of the imagination.