<B>By Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

I wouldn?t want to trade places with either Paul Bérenger or Pravind Jugnauth these days. Well to be frank, I wouldn?t want to be them on any day (God forbid!) but it must be hell being in the opposition when everybody?s so happy with the government!

Well not everybody. Only some 100,000 people.

The others - like myself - only just realized how silly we were not to have thought of applying for a job in the civil service!

Envy aside, I think it?s a great thing that salaries in the civil service have been revised so drastically. Besides the fact that it raises the status of civil servants (what a horrible term!), it also takes care of a problem bosses - and quite a few economists - have always conveniently failed to understand.

Year in and year out when trade unionists ask for more money at the time of deciding upon the quantum of wage compensation, you hear the same rhetoric - companies cannot afford to pay too much, giving people too much money will increase spending and inflation will go up and blah, blah, blah...

Usually the people who say this don?t have a cash flow problem themselves. They are certainly not losing any sleep over how to pay for children?s tuition, where to send them to an affordable university, how to build a house or simply how to eat when money has run out on the 15th.

It?s precisely because they don?t have a cash flow problem that they fail to understand that, while prices have gone up alarmingly, people?s incomes haven?t followed the trend.

That?s why I think it?s a great thing the salaries have been reviewed in the public sector. The private sector, which usually pays huge amounts to its bosses, should follow suit and completely revise their pay policy. It?s not just the big shots that are entitled to live comfortably, after all.

An underpaid employee is an unhappy employee and an unhappy employee is not productive. The unhappy employee is even more unproductive when he realizes that while his company scrimps and saves on him, they do not extend the same courtesy to the directors. This seems like pretty simple logic to me!

I am mighty glad that the Pay Research Bureau has understood this. I know the PRB is an independent institution but clearly government must have given some indication as to what they would like that report to contain (to say the least).So while Rama Sithanen figures out a way to pay public servants, Navin Ramgoolam goes up in people?s esteem; very smart, I must say.

People are so grateful to him they?ll forgive him almost anything. Until they get used to their new salaries and realize they could do with another pay rise, that is!

Private sector bosses, on the other hand, could do with a little help from Ramgoolam in that department. Who knows, maybe the Prime minister will oblige and give a public lecture some day on ?how to win people?s hearts?!