Public servants are self-servants?

Thursday, 22 March 2012 00:26 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

The title “public servant” is one that can be rarely used in Sri Lanka. Even though the country is home to over one million public servants, very few take the responsibility seriously enough to put the people before self.

On the top of everyone’s mind will be two incidents; the brutal death of a 21 year old boy that plummeted off a railway carriage footboard and two patients dying, allegedly due to the ongoing paramedics’ strike. There may have been even more casualties, had the doctors strike not been prevented by a court order, but given that it will come to pass sooner or later, it is very likely that many more columns of print will be dedicated to it.

Public servants in Sri Lanka have become self-servants. They enjoy salaries from tax payer’s money and then forget to serve those very same people. What must be remembered is that even though they fight the Government, at the end of the day the State exists to regulate and dispense public finances. So where are the people in this equation?

The fact that a youth was literally cut in half because a public servant was negligent in fixing the bolts of a footboard is the dire truth that we face today. Granted that a three-member commission is probing the incident and there have already been opinions voiced by the railway establishment that the death was due to the youth getting off the train before it had come to a stop. No doubt during the next few days there will be many theories put forward and forgotten, but that does not replace a lost life.

The same argument can be made in the paramedics’ case. It can be safely predicted that they will deny the incident, perhaps with cause, and after several rounds of verbal tennis they will resolve their issues with the Government and normalcy will resume. Yet does that bring the two dead people back? Will their loved ones be so easy to appease?

Public servants need to answer to a public conscience. They need to remember that there is more than their ends to be gained. The means to those ends also count and while it is very popular from everyone from bus drivers to electrical engineers to hold the Government for their “rights” they must also be aware of the fact that it cannot be at the cost of other people’s right to life.

Public servants need to stop holding the power of life or death over the very people that they claim to serve. While this has become mostly rhetoric in recent years it cannot be denied that there is a crying need to get people to understand the basic difference between right and wrong. It can be right to fight for rights but it is wrong to do so at the risk of someone else’s life. The fact that others may do it does not excuse its continuance. Whether there is a strike or not public servants are duty bound to serve the people. For once they must become servants to their conscience not only their wallets.