May 13, 2012Dear Sir,Civil servants and other Government workers are rightly worried about their jobs. I regularly hear about underperforming Government employees who, instead of being sacked have, in the past, been supported by Government engaging another body who will actually do the work. Basically, three people paid for doing two people’s work. A small minority but multiplied many times over, this is could be one of the reasons why the cost of Government has ballooned during the Brown and Cox years. Commentators suggest that the worst thing to do would be to make Government employees redundant, to add to the thousands already out of work, because they would have to go on social support. They usually omit to mention that the majority are out of work because of the Progressive Labour Party’s financial mismanagement and bad policies. I very much doubt many would require financial support if made redundant apart from the lowliest clerical employees, because while most of us in the private sector have struggled, many Government workers have got pay rises on top of their already generous employment packages. By viewing Government job adverts the sums being paid are astronomical and probably twice what would be offered by a local Bermudian company for something similar.My solution: Make every fifth Government employee redundant, ideally losing the time-wasters, private computer and incessant phone users first and if they got paid $80,000 a year, excluding Government’s employee costs, give them $40,000 a year for two years to stay away. Seniors and many low income workers survive with a great deal less. That will get rid of most of the deadwood and save $50 million a year in the first two years and $100 million a year thereafter that can be put towards the interest payments on the $1.4 billion debt that Brown and Cox have generated on our behalf. The ex-employees cannot get another job within Government for five years but get to keep the $40,000 a year for the two years even if they do get a job in the private sector and start to contribute to the economy. If that is not acceptable, then any employee earning over the median wage gets their pay cut by 20 percent, but to no lower than the median wage. Will this be hard on the Government employees? Yes, most certainly, but at present everybody else is hurting while they continue to receive high salaries and low cost health insurance, all of which is paid for by the dwindling number of taxpayers. If we ever get the debt paid off and the economy ever turns around, then the Government employees can slowly get the pay cut reapplied. No matter what they say now, whoever wins the next election has to severely cut the cost of Government, so is it to be one in five or 20 percent across the board? I suggest the Government employees start think about their post election futures.STRUGGLING TAXPAYERPembroke