NGOs slam supplement cuts

The Phnom Penh Post
Thursday, 07 January 2010 15:03
By Robbie Corey Boulet

Termination of salary supplements could jeopardise aid projects, groups warn

Photo by: Sovan Philong
A nurse attends to a sick child at Treal Health Centre in Kampong Thom last year. The elimination of salary supplements is expected to affect healthcare workers.

DEVELOPMENT organisations on Wednesday offered scathing criticism of the government’s recent decision to terminate salary supplement programmes for civil servants, a move that could cost government workers at least US$4.5 million this year in the health sector alone.

At a meeting convened by the Cooperation Committee of Cambodia, more than 40 NGO leaders said the abrupt termination of the programmes could lead to a rise in absenteeism among civil servants tasked with staffing health centres and schools or administering other aid projects.

Under salary supplement programmes, development organisations had been bolstering salaries for civil servants in a range of sectors.

Development experts fear a reduction in public sector pay could lead to increased corruption, as civil servants look to maintain their present incomes.

A December 4 letter from Minister of Finance Keat Chhon said the programmes’ termination – the result of a sub-decree that went into effect January 1 – was “applicable to all donor-assisted as well as [government-] funded projects and programmes”.

Sharon Wilkinson, country director for Care International in Cambodia, said at the meeting that the sub-decree had caught NGOs completely by surprise.

“NGOs did not really start to comprehend that this sub-decree had come into effect until perhaps the early hours of Christmas,” she said, adding that the announcement had given them “no time to prepare for the implementation of this”.

Apart from slashing services to poor Cambodians, including the provision of antiretroviral therapy to HIV-positive patients, Wilkinson expressed concern that the termination of salary supplement schemes could set up “a parallel system” between NGOs and civil servants.

“If we are no longer allowed to support our government counterparts, it will be a true wedge between NGOs and the government, and we will be working in a parallel system, something we must not allow to happen,” she said.

In his December 4 letter, Keat Chhon justified the termination by saying that salary supplements could jeopardise attempts at broader civil-service reforms.

Wilkinson, who has worked in Cambodia for 11 years, said Wednesday that she was sceptical of that reasoning.
“The public-sector reform programme is an ongoing debate that for 11 years has not been solved,” she said.

Keat Chhon also said in the letter that incentive-based pay schemes could be seen as unfair, a claim that was echoed by Minister of Information Khieu Kanharith, who said last month that they could “cause bad feelings in the workplace and lead to declines in productivity”.

Belinda Mericourt, senior programme manager at Aus-AID, Australia’s foreign aid arm, said she was unconvinced by the argument that salary supplements were excessively “divisive”. “It can’t be any more divisive than patronage,” Mericourt said.

A December 18 letter from Keat Chhon to government officials that was distributed at the CCC meeting said the sub-decree had been drafted “per instruction of” Prime Minister Hun Sen. Council of Ministers spokesman Phay Siphan said Wednesday that the government’s “conservative” national budget had made salary supplements “unsustainable”.

“It’s sustainability we want,” he said, adding: “We have to depend on our own budget. We cannot depend on aid all the time.”

He also reiterated government concerns that salary supplements could “create an unjust environment in the workplace” before referring further questions to the Ministry of Economy, which could not be reached.

According to the December 18 letter, the government “will continue to jointly discuss with the development partners on the short-term strategy to be laid out urgently to ensure effectiveness of project implementation and to amend financing agreements affected by the termination”.

But Mericourt said at the Wednesday meeting that a request from development partners for a meeting with government officials – sent on December 17 and signed by bodies including the United Nations and the World Bank – had gone unanswered, adding that she did not expect a response before next week.

She said the government had provided little direction on how development organisations should adapt to the terms of the sub-decree, which many at the meeting described as unclear.

“There is apparent confusion and a lack of understanding of what this means,” she said, adding that there had been no word from officials regarding whether alternate forms of compensation – such as per diems – could be used in place of salary supplements.

Development partners have largely refrained from criticising the sub-decree. A statement issued Wednesday by the Office of the UN Resident Coordinator, for example, reads in part: “The UN in Cambodia will align with the Royal Government’s decision to terminate salary supplements. While we are aware of the potential short-term impacts of this decision, it is clear that restructuring civil service salaries represents an opportunity for the UN and development partners to work with the Government on salary reform.”

At the meeting Wednesday, however, Mericourt was more candid, at one point saying the move had the potential to become “a total disaster”.

“I think the emphasis has to be on the humanitarian impact, not on government politics,” she said.

Government officials and development organisations have been unable to put a dollar amount on the salary supplement programmes.

On Tuesday, Maxim Berdnikov, East Asia and the Pacific portfolio manager for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said active Cambodia grants included provisions for $381,500 in monthly salary supplements, making for a 12-month total of roughly $4.5 million. A Global Fund spokesman said the fund was in compliance with the sub-decree, meaning the salary supplements had been suspended.

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY MOM KUNTHEAR

Ozawa girds for major Diet reform

Poll ploy? DPJ kingpin vows to ram bill to neuter bureaucracy through this session

The Japan Times
By ALEX MARTIN
Staff writer

Is Ichiro Ozawa hungry for dictatorial power, or is he a political hero seeking to strengthen the Diet by cutting the bureaucracy down to size?

Puppet master: Ichiro Ozawa, secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, faces reporters at DPJ headquarters in Tokyo on Dec. 14. KYODO PHOTO

Throughout his long political career, Ozawa, now secretary general of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, has spoken of the need for politicians and not bureaucrats to set policy both in the Diet and in the government.

His efforts have yet to amount to much. But now Ozawa, regarded by some as the most powerful man in the ruling bloc, appears bent on pushing through a key Diet reform bill.

"If an agreement cannot be reached, we will have to settle for a majority vote," Ozawa said at a Dec. 7 news conference, implying that if the opposition camp tries to block the bill, he will use the DPJ's majority in the Lower House to ram it through the Diet during the session that starts this month.

That was standard practice during the Liberal Democratic Party's five decades of nearly unbroken rule. As a former key LDP member, Ozawa well understands this.

The bill would prohibit the chief of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau from speaking in the Diet, effectively relinquishing the bureau's role in determining the government's official interpretations of the Constitution, especially the war-renouncing Article 9, and turning that responsibility over to the Cabinet.

The bill also calls for increasing the number of senior vice ministers and ministerial aides — who are responsible for communicating policy decisions directly to the heads of the bureaus within the ministries — and abolishing the practice of summoning government officials to give testimony in the Diet.

The proposed legislation has been hit for giving the Cabinet too much discretion in interpreting the Constitution, potentially leaving Article 9 vulnerable to differing readings depending on who is in power.

The LDP has slammed what it calls Ozawa's plan to bulldoze the bill through the Diet, arguing there are more important matters to take up in the coming session.

"It's simply wrong" to rely on a majority, LDP Secretary General Tadamori Oshima said.

The DPJ-led ruling bloc should strive to win over the opposition camp instead of using its majority to force the bill through, Oshima said.

Ozawa has been pushing to amend the Diet law since 1993, when his book "Nihon Kaizo Keikaku" ("Blueprint for a new Japan") was released. He proposed that bureaucrats be banned from answering questions from Diet members.

His call for reform reportedly stems from his experience with the Cabinet Legislation Bureau in 1991. This was during the Gulf War when he was still in the LDP.

The party's secretary general at the time, he was frustrated by the bureau's refusal to allow Japan to provide support on the ground for U.S.-led coalition forces despite repeated requests from Washington and the LDP.

Nihon University political science professor Tomoaki Iwai said Ozawa has been bitter about the bureau ever since, and the Diet reform bill is, in a sense, his revenge.

"I believe that's where it all began for Ozawa," Iwai said.

Iwai supports the reform bill nonetheless, saying the Cabinet Legislation Bureau has only served to weaken the functions of the Diet.

"The bureau's interpretation of the law is too strict," he said. "Yes it's true that they do a good job in keeping it in check, but this can be suffocating — it leaves no space for political compromises and makes it difficult to add amendments."

Apart from constitutional issues, lawmakers have long been known for their inability to formulate policy, relying heavily on bureaucrats to do it for them.

In fact, most of the bills submitted to the Diet have been drafted by ministry officials and senior bureaucrats often handled questions from the opposition parties during deliberations over those bills. Lawmakers focus instead on negotiations over deliberation procedures and schedules, which can determine the fate of a bill.

Under the current system, which limits regular Diet sessions to 150 days, bills that are not passed cannot, in principle, be carried over to the next session.

For this reason, the ruling camp hastens deliberations to pass legislation before sessions end, while the opposition seeks to drag out deliberations on legislation they oppose until time runs out and pending bills are scrapped.

In his book, Ozawa also called for the Diet to meet year-round to revitalize proceedings. A similar proposal was presented in November by the private-sector group Niju-isseiki Rincho (21st Century Ad-Hoc Study Group).

The group handed Ozawa a set of proposals aimed at improving the Diet's performance, including the need to meet all year long, like the British Parliament.

That proposal was left out of the new bill, with Ozawa explaining that for the time being he intends to concentrate on revising the bill so it will encourage politicians, not bureaucrats, to participate in Diet deliberations.

Sophia University political science professor Koichi Nakano said that while that change is not likely to be included in the new reform bill, he believes that as long as Ozawa is involved, a year-round Diet system is inevitable.

"Without a year-round Diet, the reform is not complete," Nakano said. "Besides, I believe voters are getting sick of the current system where the only means for the opposition to resist the passage of bills is to boycott deliberations and hope that time runs out."

Ozawa's model is based roughly on Britain's Westminster system of centralizing policymaking in the Cabinet, which in turn treats the bureaucracy as a body of obedient servants. He has called for an end to such Diet traditions as getting bureaucrats to answer questions and wasting time on partisan negotiations.

But Nakano said basing politics here on the Westminster system is both unrealistic and impractical. Although Japan operates under a bicameral system, British politics is basically unicameral, giving the ruling party almost unrestricted legislative authority — an "elective dictatorship" — where state-sponsored bills are nearly always passed, he said.

"If Japan adopts a similar system, new means will have to be found to keep the ruling party in check" so it won't abuse its power, he explained.

Former Lower House Secretary General Fukumaru Tani, who has worked in the Japanese Embassy in London, said during a recent lecture that while some portions of the current Diet law should be amended, the Japanese system also has merit.

"True, bureaucrats should be banned from answering questions in the Diet," he said. "But it's also a fact that the Japanese system allows back-benchers a chance to actively participate in various committees. The system itself is well-structured. I don't see much need for a major amendment."

But some experts say that while passing the Diet reform bill might be one of Ozawa's primary goals in the upcoming session, he has plenty of other items on his plate.

Hidekazu Kawai, an honorary professor at Gakushuin University, said Ozawa was supplying enough ammunition so the DPJ won't lose its momentum before the July Upper House election.

"To be frank, there's no need to amend the current Diet law to achieve the changes mentioned in the reform bill," he said.

"If the Cabinet didn't want bureaucrats to answer questions in the Diet, it could simply appoint someone from the ruling coalition or government to stand instead," Kawai said. "So why is he pushing for such a bill? It's because he has the Upper House election in mind and wants to sustain public attention until then."