Budget cuts to pay for holiday travels [1]
Thursday, July 1, 1999 - 09:00. Updated on Friday, January 8, 2016 - 13:36.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 14, no. 3, July 1999.
By Pesi Fonua.
This year government cut its Budget to pay for the retirement and holiday travelling of public servants. It was more important for government to keep the 4,500 public servants happy, than to allocate funds to boost exports and to prop up the value of the pa‘anga.
The salaries of the public servants take up over half of government’s annual income, with little left over for providing a quality service. Now, that little has been made even less, with a five per cent cut in the votes of all the Ministries (excepting for Parliament and Defence) in order to pay for the retirement and travel funds.
In addition a supplementary budget of $2 million for 1998-99 was called for to end the travel “leave passage” scheme. And again by the second week of August another $1 million supplement was allowed for 1999-2000 to send some more lucky public servants away on what was supposed to be the last leave passage to be paid by government.
How on earth has Tonga ended up with a public service that has nearly crippled its economy? Leave passage goes back to the days when expatriate administrators needed both time and money to sail back home to Britain, but that scheme has remained for decades after they left. The leave passage today amounts to thousands of pa‘anga for each public servant who has reached a certain level of administration.
The problem now is the accumulation of back-dated leave that is due, particularly among public servants who had not realised they were entitled to claim leave passage, until word got out that government had decided to abolish it and bring in a new retirement scheme.
So while we suffer under an impoverished public service, we await the dawn of a new millennium.