By Hermes Solomon
WHOSE IDEA was it to displace the unresolved NPL fiasco from media headlines with an underhand attack on civil servant retirement bonuses (EFAPAX) – the government or the troika?
One in five of the working population belongs to this class – add their families and we are talking about 200,000 citizens adversely affected by ‘government interference’ with previously established and legally binding government/union agreements.
Job losses, wage cuts and taxing civil servant retirement bonuses have been on the cards ever since austerity measures were first mooted between the troika and Christofias government.
But why bring the matter to the fore at this tender time? Couldn’t it have waited until the NPL foreclosure bill had been done and dusted?
We are now faced with two imponderables – NPL legislation and EFAPAX – the loss of the next tranche, which will threaten our banks with default and an intractable and uncooperative public service sector.
Friday’s strike by civil servants was called off after the government apparently pulled back on the retirement bonus tax. But such austerity measures will return and strikes will lead an already struggling economy towards total collapse.
Is this what government and the troika want: bring civil servants to their knees by disregarding former agreements and slashing wages and benefits like the troika did in Greece?
If that’s the case then our civil servants will emulate the Greeks by only working efficiently when bribed: ‘Your driving licence renewal requires you first slip me ten euros under the counter or wait at the back of the queue while we work to rule.’
Much of the public service is quietly undergoing reorganisation.
The Inland Revenue and VAT departments were recently combined under one roof, and the number of town/village halls is to be reduced drastically, their finances and powers coming under the control of one of five district offices; these are just two examples of the many troika incited public service rationalisation requirements.
Jobs are already being sacrificed in search of efficiency and the subsequent lowering of costs.
Cousins and kompare seem like passing strangers now. How can they hurry by? They were so inseparable. Now they’re acting very strange.
Hands that used to touch, don’t even wave hello, etc.
Was the government’s initial attack on civil servant retirement bonuses intentional – confrontational – implying that civil servant pay and conditions are next to come under fire?
It’s no wonder unions over-reacted by calling members to strike ahead of negotiations which forced the government to step back – for now.
If EFAPAX is a sum paid on the number of years served then it is earned income and taxable. And in the case of a one off payment of 200,000 euros, the tax bill will be hefty to say the least; the point being that government cannot backdate a new law which reneges on previous agreements.
If government chooses to introduce a new law then it should be applied from the day of its introduction.
For the first time in many years, union leaders are gathered around the same table, united against further job cuts and yet further lowering of income and benefits. Battle lines are drawn.
But government and unions have yet to make clear that EFAPAX money is already spoken for in nine cases out of ten. Civil servants depend on it to pay off long term loans, which they took out in the secure knowledge that tax-free ‘golden handshakes’ on retirement would cover final financial shortfalls.
Banks favoured lending freely to this class in the certainty that loans were reliably recoverable. Now they are not, along with many other loans, causing yet further shortfalls for banks and government treasury receipts.
And let’s not forget that politicians’ pay and conditions do not fall into this EFAPAX abyss, although they equally feathered their own beds whenever union leaders feathered their member’s beds..
It is rumoured that the NPL foreclosures bill was designed to protect the 86 per cent of NPLs owed by the island’s ‘bankrupt’ elite. Switching the spotlight to civil servant EFAPAX – whether it was troika instigated or instigated by bankrupt developers and banks in co-ordination with ‘certain’ politicians – was a stroke of political genius; the elite protecting les intérêts des riches me semble d’être de rigueur aujourd’hui !
And when I heard that Dominic Strauss Kahn had secretly visited Cyprus (avoiding physical contact with any of our décolleté media interviewers on the day) to discuss Luxembourg hedge funds with our minister of finance, I knew that the 14 per cent first residence NPLs had already been sold down the river; asset stripping, whether property or clothing, une spécialité of the disgraced former IMF chief.
Anti-union commentators must weigh their comments against those directed at our crooked developers, bankers and corrupt politicians. At least unions ‘democratically’ negotiated their way up the standard of living ladder, only to be brought down several rungs by those now sat on the opposite side of the negotiating table.
Forcing the break up and diaspora of our post 1963 ‘institutionalised civil servant family’ is what the troika ‘has in its eye’. Perhaps it’s not before time, but it will cause yet more hardship for the majority…
Let’s make no mistake; if future union strikes bring the economy to a standstill, we are all losers, apart, that is, from the island’s elite in association with those impregnable EU institutions, which persist in dragging our economy relentlessly down.
We need jobs, not death by a thousand cuts…
