¦ Mr. Imrith, you have made proposals to the minister of Finance. How optimistic are you that these will be taken into account when drafting the new budget?

First of all this is the first budget that is being presented by the newly-elected government and by a new minister of Finance. It is also a fact that he was minister of Finance when Paul Bérenger was Prime minister, and now, there is a great significance in this budget because the present minister of Finance is replacing former minister of Finance Rama Sithanen.

¦ With whom you did not have a very good relationship…

For four years, we had a good working relationship. But things soured towards the end of his mandate in 2010.

¦ Why was that?

Towards the end of his mandate, the former Finance minister, unconditionally covered the entire ill-doings of the financial secretary. The minister became over-protective of the financial secretary. He was blinded by this over-protectiveness, lost his objectivity and blindly supported the financial secretary’s policy of curtailing government expenditure through an irrational downsizing of the civil service.

¦ Weren’t they right to do so? Is there no waste in the government service? Isn’t it overcrowded?

A scientific human resource assessment exercise to determine the true needs of the civil service has never been carried out.

Overcrowding in the civil service is a jargon used by the disciples of the ultra- liberal capitalist system to do away with the civil service. This is with a view to making lucrative commerce and business out of the basic needs of the common people.

¦ We are not ultra-liberals but we know the civil service is a fat cow. Everybody knows that.

We cannot take a perception for the truth. It is dangerous to downsize the civil service based on a perception and not on a scientific exercise. In the absence of such an exercise nobody can speak of overcrowding in the civil service. On the other hand, understaffing can be observed in all fields of the civil service. Mr. Sithanen and his financial secretary chose the easy way out to curtail public expenditure by not providing funds to fill vacancies in the civil service.

¦ But aren’t there many superfluous jobs created for people who’ve helped the government in some way or another?

The minister of Finance has never targeted superfluous jobs created for blue-eyed boys/girls.

Such posts have never been an issue for our Union. Our concern relates to posts that have been created very judiciously. The creation of posts in the civil service is not a whimsical affair.

Several procedures have to be followed before creating a post on the Civil Establishment Order.

The creation of every post has first to be justified at departmental level and at Ministry level.

The representatives of each Ministry have to justify to the ministry of Civil Service and Administrative Reforms the need for every single post and only when this ministry is agreeable to the creation or the filling of certain posts does it proceed to the ministry of Finance for funds.

¦ All these procedures do not counteract the fact that government needs to cut down on expenditure.

Ever since Mr. Sithanen assumed duty, he and his financial secretary started blindly curtailing government expenditure. We are not against reducing expenses in the civil service, but this should be done after a scientific survey has been carried out.

¦ Isn’t this scientific study carried out through the Pay Research Bureau (PRB)?

Exactly, the PRB conducts a scientific study prior to taking a decision as to the level of hierarchy and the number of grades needed in each category. It is done in a systematic way. So when the minister of Finance, one person, for the purpose of curtailing government expenditure just takes a decision to go against the recommendations of the PRB, it is not conducive to increasing efficiency in the civil service.

¦ The problem with trade unions is that they are always asking for more money for the workers irrespective of the situation the country is in. And the ideas proposed in your memorandum are no exception.

No. Let’s put things in their context. In the financial year 2008/2009, due to the apprehended financial crisis, three measures were taken: first, a ten per cent reduction of ministers’ salaries, the stoppage of fees payable to chairpersons and board/committee members of statutory bodies and payment of entertainment allowances where applicable and fi nally not granting any increase to workers drawing a monthly salary of more than Rs. 12 000. Well, now the ministers’ salaries have been updated with the ten per cent, the chairmen’s fees and fringe benefits are back to normal and the only ones who are penalized are those workers earning more than Rs 12,000 monthly.

¦ Are you suggesting that the crisis is over and that we should splash out again?

The global economic crisis we are facing is not a cyclical crisis but rather a systemic one, which is the result of the current economic model. And this is something that Rama Sithanen did not realize. He led the population to believe that we are going through a cyclical crisis and that the Stimulus Packages proposal was the only way to alleviate the situation. He even said that we needed to start preparing for economic recovery. For him, in six months, in twelve months, the situation would go back to normal and the economy would recover. He even prepared a plan for the economic recovery. But now, with the new government, though we have the same financial secretary, he came up with another model of Additional Stimulus Package through the Economic and Restructural Competitiveness Programme to address another economic crisis due to fluctuation in the euro.

¦ Is this model different from the previous one?

It is perhaps the same thing in a different packaging.

¦ Does that make it better?

Not really. The approach itself is wrong. The former minister of Finance, the current minister of Finance and the present financial