Pay raise to attract capable people??????

I am not really interested in politics and law making and all these things so that may be the reason I am not up to date with thing happening back at home and what people are saying……..

But today I was going through this page on Facebook; Bhutanese forums…… and I was really disheartened with something I read there. It was about the salary raise issue…… I know this is a too little late, (not that it would have mattered anyway)……it seems that the reason for raising the parliamentarians’ salary including the ministers’ was to attract “capable people”.

This really disturbed me……… what does our country need right now? Capable people, huh, they are in hundreds and maybe even thousands but they are not we need right now. These are people we just want. What we really need are capable people who want to serve the country deep down from their heart and not expecting anything in return, and these are hard to find.

Let’s not complicate things and just think straight forward. Would raising the salary really attract the right people? Don’t you think this will attract only the ones who are “money minded”, concerned with only their personal benefits, and those want to make enough to last afterwards? Doesn’t it sound like the motivation for people to join political parties is off the wrong track? If money is the motivation for people to take up such high and important positions, then I think it’s just a shame. It’s a shame for the policy makers, the ones who want to join politics and for the nation as a whole.

We need people who are not motivated by material wealth but the ones who really want to serve the country no matter what. And to find these people we need the right motivation. If a person really wants to serve the country it wouldn’t matter what kind of work they have to do or how much they are paid. I know this is sounds impractical but this is the truth. And for this to be practical, we need to change our theories. I’ve always joked with my friends about the things we were taught as children, in particular one drill, which I guess everyone has done. You remember “fire on the mountain”, right? What we were taught was “fire on the mountain, run, run, run” and that’s where the theory went wrong. What if we were taught to go and put off the fire? I know this sounds like a bad joke, but think about it. If we were taught to face the problems and tackle them ourselves or with friends, what do you think will happen whenever there is a forest fire? The right values need to be instilled at the earliest so that we don’t corrupt as we age. If the theories are right, then the practical will automatically be right.

In my personal opinion, if we reduce the salary to may be half or even less, then we’ll be able to sort out the right people needed for the job. The one, who turns out to serve no matter how much the salary is reduced to, is the one we really need.