In a rational world people would take to the streets

LAST SUNDAY I wrote about the privileged employees of the public sector, the annual cost of which to the taxpayer is in the region of €2.7 billion.
Figures, given this week by the general secretary of PASYDY, about the princely allowances paid to deputies and state officials as well as the revelations at legislature about the golden boys of the CyBC add weight to the conclusion of last Sunday’s comment. We cannot expect any measures to sort out the mess of public finances by the political parties or the government.
In effect, they are also participating in the plundering of public money. Unless the non-privileged workers of the private sector – those who pick up the tab – organise themselves and react to this injustice, there is no hope for this plundering to stop and for state finances to be put on a sound basis.
According to the figures released, our deputies are paid €76,000 per year, of which half is given in the form of non-taxable allowances. Even though they are not taxable, they are factored into the calculation of their pensions. The most outrageous revelation was that even the allowance paid to deputies for secretarial services is factored into the calculation of the pension – for a deputy who has served 10 years, the allowance for a secretary adds €513 to his monthly pension.
In total, the pension of deputy with two terms in the legislature is €4,682, of which €1,368 derive from his allowances. For deputies, allowances are not only exempt from taxation but they also give birth to higher pensions. The same applies for the top-ranked state officials such as judges, ministry permanent secretaries, commissioners etc.
This is not the only benefit enjoyed by deputies. On their retirement from the legislature, they are paid a bonus of €200,000 (for 10 years’ service). This is how state coffers are plundered by deputies and it is part of the wider plundering in which top-ranking state officials as well as the head honchos of semi-state organisations participate.
In a rational world, one would have expected a strong public reaction by the trade unions to this unacceptable situation. But the unions, instead of protecting their members, that fund the privileges of deputies and state officials, protect the perpetrators of the plundering. The right-wing union federation SEK has always been on the side of the privileged, because it has top officials of semi-state organisations among its members.
The communist-party controlled PEO federation, whose leader is among the golden boys of the legislature, has no problem betraying its members, the vast majority of whom are among the lower-paid workers of the private sector. Bizarrely, the union that supposedly looks after the interests of ordinary workers fully supports the plundering of state coffers by the privileged class. It is not bothered that the privileges are funded by the taxes paid by the low-paid workers of the private sector, that is, its members.
Needless to say, the golden boys of the legislature, the state services and semi-state organisations have not even felt the recession. They continue to enjoy their privileges, with the support of the union bosses who prefer to engage in demagoguery about taxing the “the haves and the wealthy”, at a time when thousands of workers have lost their jobs and thousands of others have seen their monthly revenue drop.
But nobody is reacting to these provocative injustices. This is just another of the unexplained phenomena evident in our strange country.