Austerity measures

The government says it is cutting expenditure by about Rs200 billion a year as it struggles to comply with IMF conditions to keep the country from defaulting. One of the recently-announced measures that has gotten a lot of attention is the decision for cabinet members to lose pretty much all perks and privileges, and even their salaries. Other elected officials and bureaucrats will also lose several ‘luxurious’ perks. While we do spend far too much on perks and privileges for public employees, both elected and unelected, these benefits are often highly politicised and won’t lead to significant cost savings because, in practice, many of them are necessary, albeit open to abuse in their current structure.

Cutting perks is primarily about optics, yet the government seems to forget that the optics of a bloated 85-member cabinet are far worse. Also, not all politicians are industrialists, zamindars or waderas. Salaried individuals who give up their day jobs for public service deserve to maintain a certain standard of living. However, it is true that such people remain in the minority, so cutting perks is mostly only applying to people for whom their government salaries are pocket change. They can surely pay their own utility bills and pay for their own air tickets if they want to fly in business or first class, or stay at luxury hotels.

It is also worth noting that many people are getting perks that they are not entitled to, yet nobody is punished for these abuses. Car privileges are the most commonly abused, even though they should be easy to spot. People taking multiple vehicles, including by availing the monetisation scheme and official cars simultaneously, can easily be caught. There should be no leniency for those stealing from the public exchequer. Meanwhile, ‘luxury’ should be at personal expense. Even 1800cc cars are too much — we could ‘own’ our poverty by only allowing entry-level vehicles, as long as they are well maintained. To paraphrase the PM, this would help reduce resentment among the masses, who can barely afford to travel in overcrowded vans.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 24^th, 2023.

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