Believe it or not, this is exactly what we Sri Lankans have been doing (well, most of us) these past 62 years after independence! We eat, we drink, we sing and dance without a thought for tomorrow because tomorrow mightn’t come, you know. Really, we’ve been one of the most laid-back, relaxed countries in South Asia if not the world. How or why you might well ask? We have enjoyed FREE education from the kindergarten through university; we’ve enjoyed FREE health care including costly surgery; our hardly-working public servants have enjoyed FREE railway travel warrants; most, if not all public services are FREE. For many years we enjoyed a FREE rice ration; our peasant-cultivators and plantation owners enjoy subsidized fertilizer for agricultural crops. Isn’t Sri Lanka the "Land of the Free, home of the brave?" Ask anyone, anywhere on this ‘Island in the Sun’ what he or she’s doing and the answer is: "Nikang-innava" or "Doing nothing." Wonderful! The soil is fertile, it rains abundantly, the palms are full of coconuts and king-coconuts, the banana, papaw and other fruit trees a heavily laden….indeed, isn’t nature prodigious in her generosity? She is and we’ve taken her and many other things for granted, especially this ‘free’ business.
Nobel-prize winning Chicago-school economist Milton Friedman is famous for saying, "There is no such thing as a free lunch." Nobody could have said a truer word to tell us that nothing is free. Someone has to pick-up the tab. What most of us have consistently failed to understand is that we’ve been picking-up the tab through the taxes, levies, cesses, and fees we pay for almost everything. The utterly horrid cost-of-living is another facet of this ‘free’ business. The late Afro-American activist Brother Malcolm X is credited with saying: "Now, the chickens have come home to roost." When we say that ‘chickens are coming home to roost,’ we mean that dreadful or stupid things done in the past are beginning to cause acute problems There was too much greed in the past, and now the chickens are coming home to roost with abuse of power, malingering, absenteeism, grave crime, unconscionable waste, bribery, malpractice and corruption soaring. To add to the problems enumerated, we have far too many holidays that encourage even more laziness, a life-style we can ill-afford in the 21st century.
Let’s look at this matter with detachment: We enjoy 52 Saturdays and 52 Sundays. That’s 104 days. We then have 13 Poya or Full-moon days in deference to Buddhist sentiments. That adds up to 117 days. That’s 32.5 per cent of the year, almost but not quite one-third and isn’t that enough? What we have is 248 working days, that is, 1,984 hours. That into the number of able-bodied persons actually employed and self-employed would give us the number of man-hours that are being, hopefully, productively utilized to produce prosperity for all. Those who actually work and produce have to support all the non-working children, students, lactating mothers, stay-at-home housewives, the aged and infirm, the physically and mentally disabled, the ill and indisposed, those in prison, the non-working clergy, the unemployed and the unemployable. That’s quite a burden to bear.
Let’s take a look at some other countries in relation to our situation:( see figure)
* Employees in Finland, Brazil and France are entitled to the greatest number of statutory annual leave days and those in India, Canada and China, the least
* Employees in Japan and India have the highest number of public holidays while those in the Britain, Netherlands and Australia, the least
It will be seen that we have too many statutory holidays and too generous leave entitlements which all translate to days off productive work all of which impact on the economy and ultimately on the overall level of prosperity.
Therefore, in the best interests of all, at least 15 days should be cut. Those days, if related to religion, could be commemorated or celebrated on the nearest Saturday or Sunday. If secular, the nearest Saturday or Sunday should also suffice.
It is time we realized that a ‘la dolce vita’ life-style is quite unaffordable with our per capita income. It should also be understood that our per capita income is in actual fact quite unevenly spread with a huge disparity between the highest and lowest incomes. It would be much better for us to work harder with fewer holidays and raise our living standards instead of bellyaching and blaming the Government for our laid-back situation. However, the government should set the example by significantly reducing the number of public, mercantile and bank holidays to the barest minimum in the best long-term interests of all.
The trade unions should be called-up and told in no uncertain terms that the holidays are going to be reduced; that indolence and absenteeism have to be reduced to the irreducible minimum…..or else! Without enforced discipline the country cannot progress. Along with these measures widespread corruption in all its manifestations has to be rolled-back. Measures should be instituted from the top down, step-by-step, to change the murky environment. Punishment should be swift and severe to root out all forms of corrupt practice. When such measures are taken the people would be encouraged to lend to the government its wholehearted co-operation and support to make Sri Lanka the ‘Hub of South Asia.’ Without draconian measures we could hardly succeed.
After these things have been instituted, let’s have a ball. We’ll then be well able to afford it.
Courtesy - The Island - By J.B. Müller
