-->
Was Mayor
right?
Mayor Sagar Naik paid a surprise visit to Navi
Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC). He took to task those NMMC employees who
were late to office. These late comers were made to stand outside the NMMC building
for a long time. The Mayor came under severe attack for this behaviour and at
the same time he received bouquets too from many quarters. Did the Mayor do the
right thing by taking such severe action against the late comers?
Sagar Naik is enjoying the second term as Mayor. He
chose to begin his new term by taking drastic action against the later comers
in NMMC office. Naik is prone to making such types of moves. During his first
term as mayor he had chosen to personally clean nullah and gutter to set an
example.
There is nothing wrong in disciplining the NMMC
employees. But do they deserve to be disciplined in a way teachers discipline
the school children? Surely, almost all those NMMC employees whom the Mayor
punished are older than Mayor if you consider all their ages. The post of Mayor
is definitely the top post within Navi Mumbai. The late comers were occupying
the lower post. Mayor had every right to punish them if you go by laws. But is
it ethical for a young master to punish his older servants? Law is certainly
important. But there is also such a thing called ethics.
This reminds me of a scene in a film in which Dilip
Kumar slaps his small school going son simply because this small boy had
slapped his aged servant for disobeying him. Legally there was nothing wrong in
that small boy slapping his aged servant since after all the boy was the master
of that old man. But if you go by ethics, Dilip Kumar was absolutely right in
raising objection to his son slapping an elderly servant. It was necessary that
the small boy learnt some lessons about ethics and thus Dilip Kumar did the
right thing by slapping him.
Another thing is that some of the NMMC employees
whom the Mayor punished were women. Mayor should at least have been merciful to
these women and not make them undergo this humility of standing outside the
NMMC office. But Mayor didn’t spare even the women folk.
The pictures of these NMMC officials who were
punished were splashed in many of the local newspapers in Navi Mumbai. Surely
the children and spouses of these employees must be going through these local
newspapers. How will they react when they see the picture of their parent or
spouse undergoing the humiliating punishment of standing outside the NMMC
office just because they were late for office? How will these late comers face
their family members when they return home? Even their relatives, neighbours
and friends must have gone through those newspapers which had their
photographs. How will these late comers answer the embarrassing questions that
will be posed by their near ones?
If the Mayor was so keen on teaching these late
comers a lesson, he could have allowed them to come in and occupy their
respective seats in the office and after that the mayor could have coolly
marked them absent in the muster. After that it would be left to those late
comers to decide whether they would want to work without pay or whether they
would prefer to go back home. This practice of marking the late comers absent
in the muster could have done the trick not only on the day when the Mayor paid
a surprise visit but also on any other day. Where was the need of making the
late comers stand outside the NMMC office?
It would not be right to just blame the Mayor for
resorting to such harsh tactics to prevent such cases of late coming. The
question is why should employees come late to office? This tendency to come
late to office is found not only in NMMC Headquarters but also in many
government offices. Many government employees are not serious about
punctuality. They somehow feel that since they are government employees they
are no less than government and hence they can make their own rules and follow
them. They have little resp ect for the written laws. You won’t find such
behaviour among the employees in private offices. A private employee is always
in fear of losing his job and hence he solemnly obeys all the laws. A
government employee, on the other hand, knows that even if he or she comes late
or does his or her work slowly or back answer his or her seniors, who object to
their behaviour, there is no chance of he or she losing the job. This is the
difference between the government employee and the private one. Such type of
attitude of the government servant must have provoked the Mayor of Navi Mumbai
to take such a drastic step. If you see one way, you can’t blame him. After all,
he is also human!
No comments:
Post a Comment