Housekeeping money

Running the household is never cheap as a proportion of income no matter if you are rich or poor. The staff — if they can be afforded — are a significant item. They need paying every month and their various expenses like health and the education of their children all soak up the rupees, and when you have 833 of them the bill can be sizeable. That is how many it takes to staff the Prime Minister’s Office and the number will reach 840 by the end of the financial year. Of those, 807 are regular and 33 contractual. One might wonder what they all do. Presumably there is a Chief Waste Bin Emptier who will have their own office and support staff, right up to whoever tidies the PM desk every morning.

Documents in the public domain tell us that 90 new employees were hired in the 2017-18 fiscal and the PM office budget grew by 7.5 per cent in the coming year to Rs986 million as against Rs916.722 million in the outgoing fiscal. One might wonder exactly what it is that the PM office is engaged in that requires such an increase in personnel for its smooth running — but of course that is a state secret and we will never be any the wiser. What we can deduce is that the PM has not prioritised the hiring of women — there are just 10 in the public section of his office.

Also of note is that Rs706 million are allocated to ‘employees related expenses’ and Rs11 million for retirement expenses. A paltry Rs3.5 million are allocated to ‘entertainment and gifts’ which might appear to be almost thrifty. What we are not in on the secret of is the budget of the PM house or what might be the discretionary funds available to the PM which are likely in the billions and also likely to get rapidly disbursed before anybody puts a cross on a ballot paper. Good housekeeping? Almost certainly not.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 2^nd, 2018.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.