Saturday, April 11, 2009

Judges Deserve Good Salaries


In any country except the Maldives, it would be shocking to see so many high profile resignations from judicial posts as we saw in recent years, including those of some of the best legal brains in the country such as Husnu Suood and Ahmed Muiz. However, in the Maldivian government services, dominated as it were by bureaucrats who insist professionals must be paid less than them, such resignations are taken in the stride. It is therefore very welcome that the Judicial Service Commission has proposed more reasonable salaries for judges.

Judges and lawyers are highly educated professionals with earning potential far surpassing the salaries they are paid in government service. While it may not be possible to fully compensate them, a reasonable salary is the minimum they deserve.

Enhancing the salaries of judges alone may not be enough to raise the quality of the legal system in the country. Lawyers also must be paid reasonable compensation and retained in the government service. The recent fiasco about lawyers in the Civil Service was eminently avoidable.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What the civil service did to lawyers in Attorney General Office was very bad. Professinals should never be treated like that.

faisal said...

No doubt, all professionals should get a decent enough salary and benefits consummate with their qualification and expereince. For me the problem is that the bar has been set too high due to the outrageous salaries doled out to majlis members, which has set a sort of benchmark in all these salary negotiations.

Anonymous said...

what about engineers and architects? they also deserve better pay. only majlis members and independent commisions get fat salaries becasue they make the decisions.

Anonymous said...

majlis members started this mad race. but we can't afford this. when will we get some sense?

Anonymous said...

tell me someone who doesnt deserve a living wage/salary....

Rasheed Bari said...

It is absurd to determine national salaries without thinking what it would do to the bottom of the pot.

When the beneficiary, suffering from MSS (Moral Shortage Syndrome) gets to decide own salary, he often tend to ignore this and fantasize a bottomless Umarus Sumbuli at least during his term in office!

I am voting for the candidates who would volunteer to introduce a salary scheme that is dependent on a sensible sustainable model that takes the whole economy into consideration.

Ahmed said...

Yeah who wouldnt like a pay hike? But where is the money? For Gods sake cant we at least think of this for a minute? How the hell can our economy afford this? Look at the state of things in the world. We are printing Rufiya and artificially controlling the foreigh exchange. The result, you cant buy US dollars from the banks any more. There are just so much Rufiya circulating. Do we want to worsen this or what? The fact of the matter is, Maldives economy cannot affor to spend like this. This must end or else we would all have to suffer!!!