A Solemn Affair

Many people find their monthly spending rising on daily basis. Just to go round to find out the prices of necessities of life, one would find out that many families are already struggling under the unfortunate pressure of rising food prices and cost of other products.

Water, electricity, travel payments among others also threatens to tip up household budget into the red. An average family’s spending monthly for essentials is roughly D2000. 

There are reports indicating that there are people receiving a minimum monthly salary of D650. This can hardly earn a bag of rice nowadays. Not to talk of the income of the pensioner population, which is quite modest. They are much more affected by the rising cost of living. As James Garfield puts it: “Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.”

Be as it is, many would expect employers to give a lot of thought to the matter of salary increase. Though we can’t say by what percent salaries should be increased, we urge the employers to give a lot of thought to the matter of salary increase. Workers pay pockets no longer match the rising prices of basic commodities.

Workers, who live on fixed income, are usually worse off when prices go up, especially so when they have no other source of income. As their income falls far short of their expenditure, they tend to live by their wits, or lose interest in their work. As a result, efficiency suffers.

What most workers take home nowadays is not just enough to make ends meet. Just imagine a family man that earns two thousand dalasis a month. If he has to spend say seven hundred on rent, three hundred on utilities, then he is left with just about one thousand. Out of this, he has to take care of feeding and other miscellaneous expenses. At the end of the day, the monthly salary doesn’t last even eight days. What happens next is for him to depend on the goodwill of the grocer to tide over the rest of the month.  This is no doubt a miserable way to live.

Interestingly, when things continue like this way, ordinary people who are known for honesty are tempted to do unimaginable things just to get by thus engaging in corruption.

Workers should be made to be able to pay their rents, feed their families, take care of if not all but half of the needs of the family so as to maintain effective and efficient performance in their various offices as better services will yield better results.

“One swallow does not make a summer, neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.”

Aristotle