The Island Editorial

EPF robbery: TUs  in slumber

02 November 2016

 

The UNP members of the Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE) are now doing their damnedest to have the public believe that they really want criminal charges brought against those responsible for the Treasury bond frauds. Having made a vain attempt to cover up the bond scam and then gone all out to dilute the COPE report thereon they are now accusing COPE Chairman Sunil Handunnetti of having handled the bond thieves with kid gloves! They seem to have taken the discerning public for suckers.

True, the COPE report is not as damning as it should have been, but Handunnetti deserves public plaudits for his efforts, given the UNP members’ hostility he had to contend with. Auditor General Gamini Wijesinghe has done the public service proud by standing up to a bunch of arrogant parliamentarians who resorted to intimidation and abuse in a bid to make him fall in line. He has demonstrated he is made of sterner stuff.

The government has its political opponents including monks arrested and remanded for offences such as misusing one or two state-owned vehicles each or keeping baby jumbos in temples. It will have to ensure that the same treatment is meted out to former Central Bank Governor Arjuna Mahendran held responsible by the COPE for the bond frauds if he ever returns to the country. It will be interesting to see whether the plethora of civil society organisations which condemned the previous regime—and rightly so—for having corrupt elements within its ranks, will try equally hard to have bond thieves arrested. Difficult as it may be for them to come to terms with the fact that their gods have feet of clay, they will only make a mockery of their anti-corruption campaign if they are seen to be partial to the powers that be.

The silence of trade unions representing the private sector workers is sickening, to say the least. They are apparently aestivating. None of them have taken to the streets against the massive losses the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) has suffered at the hands of the bond thieves who have endangered the future of millions of workers. It is a crime to misuse workers’ funds and the trade union worthies who threw in their lot with a bunch of hypocrites in the garb of political leaders who captured power last year by pretending to champion good governance had better do everything in their power to protect the EPF.

Successive governments have had an itch to meddle with the EPF. Rajapaksa government tried to replace the EPF with a pension scheme which was also to be called EPF (Employee’s Pension Fund). It had to abandon its grand plan when a young FTZ worker was shot dead by the police during a protest against the pension scheme. The present dispensation, too, sought to remove the EPF from the Central Bank supervision, claiming that it wanted to ensure the safety of the 1.3 trillion-rupee fund. Thankfully, it could not do so owing to protests. Now, the self-appointed protectors of the EPF have been exposed for lining their pockets at the expense of workers. So much for their commitment to good governance!

Some ministers are striving to throw Mahendran overboard and absolve the government leaders including Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe of wrongdoing as regards the Central Bank heist, as it were. But, never will they be able to shore up the crumbling image of the government or save any of its leaders. President Maithripala Sirisena should also be held responsible for this sorry state of affairs. He unashamedly dissolved Parliament last year to thwart the then Opposition’s efforts to table a COPE report on the bond scam in Parliament and thereby prevented the issue being used against the so-called yahapalana government at the last general election. He went so far as to deny previous COPE Chairman D. E. W. Gunasekera a  National List seat so as to silence the latter. The President, however, to his credit, later, refused to reappoint Mahendran as Central Bank Governor. But, he has to do much more by way of atonement for his sin. He has to appoint a special presidential commission headed by a sitting Supreme Court judge to probe the bond scam and the losses suffered by the EPF.

Let all trade unionists be urged to pluck up enough courage to fight for the safety of the EPF.