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Civil Servants to get Fortnightly Salaries!

Our government has decided to make it easier for our government employees to balance their household budget by introducing a fortnightly salary plan where our sarkari karmachaaris will now get paid twice a month, but of course not twice the amount of their current salary but just paid whatever they are getting now, divided by half and paid twice a month!

In the past thirty years, most of the sarkari staff actually saved more than 80% of their monthly paycheck and used their 'express service' bonus to pay their monthly bills. We cannot blame all of them but not all of them were in a position to make extra.

But how it goes is that if you are a peon or a low-ranking staff, you collect the express fee brought in by the dalals and then the money is distributed according to the ranks and everybody gets a piece of the pie at the end of the month. And some even managed to save 100% of their salaries and in a decade or two, it was quite a sizable fund to buy a few annas of land in Kathmandu or ropanis back in the 90s!

Those engaged in such 'free money' love fest must be cursing the Balen government for now, as many government offices where dalals used to collect the express service fee from service seekers have witnessed an end to the 'free money' dealings.

Our Finance Minister thinks that this fortnightly talab distribution will boost spending by our white shirts and also help to support economic activity. Well, maybe it will or it won't make any difference, will be seen in the coming months.

In my personal opinion, Nepal should go on an FDR like 'New Deal' stuff the US did back then and here Harka Sampang gets to be the Chief Labor Commissioner (CLC) of the country (or he may also go back to the Jungle!) and development projects will not only make most of our young and able-bodied ones productive but also help them with fortnightly paychecks as well.

And by the time we are done, we will have hundreds of highways not only connecting Kerung to Kolkata but also going all the way to Turkey or from China to Russia. Then we can be in the middle of all the trade flowing from all over our 'Himalayan Heavenly Highways' just like the 'Silk Road' back then!

Well, let's get back to the story of the day: Fortnightly Talab for our public servants! It's nice that they won't have to wait for the end of the month to clear all bills. The landlords will be happy, the bhatti pasal sahuji or sahuni will be happy, the local doodh-wala and the kirana pasal sahuji will be happy. Everybody will be happy except our civil servants.

Now, they can't tell the folks to wait till the end of the month to clear all dues and keep on extending the credit everywhere every month. But at the same time, it will be somewhat easier for the white shirts to maybe manage their household budget. No more living like a King for a week and three weeks of depression like Winston Churchill! Now, you are happy one week, sad another, then happy again and sad by the end of the month!

No more hiding from your landlord for months. Now, even bhattis and your local gambling den will get twice the business from some of our sarkari folks. But how far will the economy be stimulated by our twice-monthly paychecks from our civil servants?

I don't know, but I still wish we could provide amnesty to all our thulo byaparis, chor netas and hakims and dalals and offer them 20% cash back for honestly depositing all their ill-gotten wealth at Nepal Rastra Bank instead of the Cayman Islands! Now that would bring back at least US$ 50 billion dollars home and we could have a 30,000 MW hydro project completed in a decade and make a few billion Dollars a year forever to use it for development projects and more.

At the same time, when it comes to the government teachers, they are still stuck with like quarterly salary payments instead of the 15-day half-salary thing. If our Finance Ministry really wants to make it equal for everyone, then everyone on the government's payroll must be treated equally, right? Sadly, our public school teachers haven't seen a paycheck since the last festival!

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