Political dramas over electricity tariff increase while the poor kill themselves

Sri Lanka’s publicity hogging Chair of the Public Utilities Commission is distinguished (not positively) by twin evils of a ghastly sartorial choice in the wildly varied waistcoats that he sports and exhibiting great volubility in speech not accompanied by much precision or clarity of thought.

In recent weeks, he has chosen to adopt the improbable role of a knight on a white charger, riding into battle against the Government’s plan to increase electricity tariffs. This is the second proposed increase in recent months, closely following upon the heels of a previous tariff increase that has put small businesses  in peril and brought the Sri Lankan consumer one step closer to being erased from existence as the country’s economic meltdown bites home with a vengeance.

This time around, the massive tariff hike will potentially hit the country’s poorest segments, the hardest. For all President Ranil Wickemesinghe’s blustering that we have only three options to avoid catastrophe, namely to print money, to increase Value Added Tax (VAT) and to increase electricity tariffs, there is more than a touch of profound inequity regarding the proposals that his Power Minister has been trying hard to justify. These measures will surely precipitate the middle class into poverty and the poor into starvation.

Just after the dawn of the New Year, a mother poisoned herself and her five year old infant in Thalahena, unable to cope with the debt burdens that she was struggling with. This was one reported tragedy, there are very many more such horror stories, the ‘silent’ killer that stalks Sri Lankan society as poor and low income families become the first victims of gross political corruption which has sent the economy into a tailspin. Regardless, more and more burdens are being heaped on the public for the sake of recovering the minimum possible to continue essential services.

This is after thieving political leaders and their acolytes robbed the country blind. Where is the justice in this, one may well ask? When the President and his Ministers pontificate as if the crisis is due to the actions of the public and gravely inform us that there is ‘no other way’, they do so quite shamelessly. In fact, the President cannily avoids mention of the fourth and most important option, effectively dealing with robbing of the state coffers by politicians and public servants alike.

A few days ago, his Media Division issued a statement that, ‘a report’ had been summoned by the President from the heads of two huge loss making entities, Sri Lankan Airlines and Ceylon Petroleum Corporation as to how bonuses had been paid to their staff to the tune of several millions despite a state directive to the contrary. Where will these ‘reports’ go, we wonder?

To the dustbin along with innumerable other like reports, to be forgotten in double quick time? Then we have grumbling from the Power Minister regarding billions of payoffs to employees of the Ceylon Electricity Board including payback of interest on loans and the insistence of CEB trade unions on bonuses being paid to them. These are totally unwarranted perks at this time of acute hardships. The Government must take immediate steps to stop the hemorrhaging of public money and opt for restructuring of unmanageable state entities.