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September 15, 2014

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Pendulum of frugality drive swings too far, sweeps out mooncake gifts for workers

PEOPLE’S Daily published an editorial titled “Anti-corruption blitz should not cut employee benefits” on September 8, the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

In the editorial, the author opined that many routine benefits had been waived this year. For instance, employees of government organizations and their affiliated units used to be issued a kilogram of no-frills mooncakes each — a traditional pastry consumed on the festival — but this year they received none.

The absence of free mooncakes is but a sign that the sweeping frugality campaign has affected the lives of not just senior officials but grass-roots civil servants as well.

This has prompted an outcry, with critics arguing that employees’ legitimate benefits are becoming collateral damage of the crusade.

In fact, many had felt the pinch as early as last year. For instance, the annual nian ye fan, or year-end banquet, was canceled for government employees. A controversy ensued, but it was quickly reduced to whispered complaints.

The complaints weakened, but didn’t die, and they were given an outlet on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

What is curious, however, is the choice of time for the Party newspaper to publish its editorial.

It is essentially a belated plea for restoring axed benefits — should it be intended as one. Otherwise, why not publish it earlier?

But even this politically expedient argument has stirred a furor.

Some agreed that a line should be drawn between legitimate benefits and what is known as “gray income,” meaning quasi-legitimate or illegitimate perks.

Others argued that in public finance, every penny must be accounted for, citing the fact that Singaporean civil servants are obliged to buy their own teabags if they want tea at work.

Loosely termed category

It’s true that taxpayers’ money has to be accounted for, since a lot of corruption is committed in the name of doling out benefits — a loosely termed category.

Such excesses as issuance of pre-paid shopping cards and coupons can appear totally justified by slipping under the umbrella of “benefits.”

At present, criticism is rife of frugality being overdone, just like a pendulum that swings too far in the other direction, a typical Chinese modus operandi in political movement.

Frugality is fine, but employee benefits should not suffer, some say. Whether perks are merited rests on the definition of perks in the first place.

In a follow-up article published Thursday, People’s Daily reported that the Party’s top disciplinary watchdog disclosed 177 cases in violation of the anti-graft drive on its website, in which quite a few were related to dispensation of mooncakes or mooncake coupons.

In the absence of a single law that distinguishes legal benefits from those illegal, the term’s various definitions can be found in separate documents released by agencies including the Ministry of Finance, State Administration of Taxation, and All-China Federation of Labor.

According to these documents, employee benefits include health care allowances, lunch subsidies, high-temperature subsidies (for purchase of drinks to fight summer heat), festival gifts, birthday presents and so on.

Mooncakes are presumably a festival gift by definition, but the official prohibition suggests otherwise. Apparently, even the state itself lacks coherence on this matter.

The frugality campaign deserves some credit for saving millions in lost public funds and cutting miscellaneous illegitimate benefits due to civil servants.

But the indiscriminate scrapping of some perks, including mooncakes or nian ye fan, threatens to hurt the motivation of civil servants, especially those stuck at the bottom of the hierarchy, who don’t have a chance to engage in corruption.

After all, what most of them care about is not a pack of mooncakes proper, which many nowadays find too stodgy.

Rather, it is the idea that their contribution is recognized and valued. As the cliche goes, it is the thought that counts.

The People’s Daily editorial has pointed to the need to rethink the extent of frugality as a political imperative, but it also made a compelling case for transparency in income structure.

Only when spending on strictly defined perks is no longer a secret, and official pay is publicized for scrutiny, can lingering misgivings about employee perks evaporate, and the trifling brouhaha over free mooncakes laid to rest.




 

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