Pseng-Pseng
Looking
Nice Reform
“The Ministry of Economy and Finance must manage the inspection
and preparation in providing salaries to ministries, institutions, cities, and
provinces no later than the fourth week of each month.”
CPP prime
minister’s directive, 29 January, 2014
“The government is just undertaking reforms to make things look
nice, but this is useless to civil servants because this reform will not
improve their living condition. Civil servants want to see that the government
has an action plan for them to live with dignity in society,” he added.
Kao Poeun,
president of the Cambodian Independent Civil Servant Association (CICSA), 9
February, 2014
It seems CICSA
president Kao Poeun and the civil servants will have to wait a bit longer for
the dignified life they long for. For now, the 29 January directive raises the
following question: will their salaries be paid a month early, or a month late?
The pay
processing is set to take four weeks. The directive instructs that all
government establishments raise their salary payment forms and submitted by the
first week of each month to the Ministry of Public Function. By the second
week, those forms must go from there to the Ministry of Finance, where it will
take two weeks to be finalised and approved for payment by the end of the month.
It is not
clear, however, which month of work the payment process relates to. If the
payment is for the month when the paperwork is processed, the civil servants
will get their salary in advance for the time they have yet to work. The
initial payment forms must assume on day one of the month, and all subsequent
checking and approving must accept, that all payees will work for the whole
month.
Nevertheless,
if the initial payment form must record the actual time the civil servants have
already worked, then the salary payment will, under this directive’s process,
be at least a month late. Still, it will be an administrative improvement only
if frequent reports of late payments that run into months are true.
Yet, the
directive will be of some use to the civil servants if it is meant to allow an
advance payment of salary. This will give them every opportunity to attend to
their moonlighting, which does more for their stomach than their life dignity. Military
and police offers become mercenaries; teachers conduct their classroom
enterprises with their pupils; bureaucrats collect facilitation fees, and/or
become angel employees at garment factories...
But whether
the payroll is paid in advance or in arrear, with all the PhD brains and
computers, do they really need a whole month to process it?
Then again, President
Kao Poeun may be right all along: it is a reform of no substance.
Ung Bun Ang
27ii14
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