OK, slackers. Back to work. Voluntary work, that is. News that the Government was planning to lay off up to 30 superfluous garbage truck drivers and 61 rubbish collectors was loudly applauded by the taxpayer. He could be heard shouting from the rooftops immediately afterwards, saying, 'I say, what's that mess on my front step?' Not to worry, though. The Government had the problem licked. The newly unemployed would be put to work collecting rubbish in return for their social security money. Of course, they would have a choice. They could refuse to work. But they could not then expect to feed their families, now could they? Meanwhile, the social security payment would be reduced by 20 per cent forthwith, just to show it was not a charity payment and to bring home the message to the work-shy that they could not get away with doing the same job for which they had just been deemed surplus to requirements and expect to get the same money - or perhaps more - for doing it. Now that is the kind of lateral thinking that governments should do more of. After all, the private sector has already discovered the benefits of getting workers to accept pay cuts and then laying them off at lower rates of statutory redundancy pay. Since the administration, with its powerful staff unions, finds it much harder to cut pay directly, it has to find other ways of achieving the same ends. But we would not want you to think we were being excessively cynical here. So let us put the rubbish collection issue into perspective. Of course we do not honestly believe 'workfare' collectors will be doing exactly the same job they were doing as government dustmen. There will be subtle differences. Firstly, there is the matter of demarcation of territory. Government waste disposal operatives work specific routes, collecting the garbage from designated waste transfer stations. But community draftees, hereinafter to be known as volunteers, will be subject to the more flexible private sector working practices of such experienced waste management companies as Friends of the Earth. With their background in environmental lobbying, they will naturally concentrate on beaches, picnic sites, hillsides and drainage ditches. Vital work indeed. And, since the collection will be performed by hand, instead of by polluting diesel trucks, it will soon displace the inefficient and environmentally unsound system of waste-transfer depots altogether, allowing the Government to abolish its rubbish services once and for all. The householder will naturally have to accept a small change of routine to accommodate this improvement in the service and the consequent lightening of his tax burden. Henceforth he will have to carry all his household rubbish to the beaches or the country parks for collection rather than leave it piled round the totally inadequate public litter bin at the corner of the street as he does at present. Voluntary agencies will levy a small charge, on the user-pays principle. But most of the costs will be borne by the volunteers themselves, through a 'moral hazard pre-elimination charge' (MHPC), deducted at source from their social security payments. This will avoid the development of a dependency culture. This arrangement should provide a model for other privatisation schemes. So this column would like to offer a few suggestions. Underemployed Government information officers should be laid off. They can then be assigned to a non-governmental agency (NGO), or non-accountable National Government organisation (NANGO), possibly Xinhua, for voluntary work. Among the tasks would be standing next to litter-bins and explaining to householders the need to take rubbish to the beach. However, since the main object of the exercise is to save money on social security, rather than to cut government manpower costs, the restructuring started last week will eventually be widened to include workers, other than those laid off from government jobs. In particular it should encompass those who are already unemployed and cannot be laid off to take up voluntary work at lower cost. An obvious place to start would be the bottom rung of social security recipients, such as street sleepers and little old ladies who earn a few cents by searching through roadside bins and collecting tin cans for recycling. It is envisaged their social security payments should be cut by an additional 50 per cent to nip any early signs of welfare dependency in the bud. A possible suggestion for alternative sources of income, once public litter-bins are phased out, would be to redeploy them at public hospitals. There they would go through the dustbins picking out used syringes, bandages and other recyclable wastes for sale back to the Hospital Authority. This would count towards the cost of treatment for diseases of old age, since medical care will henceforth have to be charged for. Single mothers, meanwhile, have already been targeted for curative treatment. From now on, they will have to work from the moment their children are old enough either to go to school or to fend for themselves by begging in the street. Since they have clearly departed from the path of morality by allowing themselves to be separated from the child's father, those who wish to continue devoting time to its welfare and education will have to find a man to support their chosen lifestyle. These are just a few preliminary suggestions for cutting the cost of Comprehensive Social Security Assistance, which is an excessive burden to the taxpayer in recessionary times. Week Ending is happy to provide further ideas - for a consultancy fee and an invitation to the Social Welfare Department's $560-a-head 41st anniversary dinner next Christmas as a guest of the taxpayer
