THE EDITOR, Sir:

Your columnist, Heather Robinson, has presented a table comparing the salaries of parliamentarians with those of senior executives in the private sector. However, having worked in both sectors herself, she should not have allowed a number of factors to have escaped her attention.

Business executives in the private sector are invariably required to have professional training, qualifications and experience consistent with the responsibilities they have assumed. In politics, the prerequisite seems to be anything other than professionalism and experience in governance.

Accountability

Accountability in the private sector has been a reality. Goals and objectives are set, performances measured and decisions taken. Reviewing performances in the private sector usually results in determining the future of the enterprise level of emolument and the future of its employees and executives.

In the public sector, accountability hardly gets attention beyond lip service.The performances of parliamentarians are not subject to stringent review in similar manner as in the private sector.

Usually, it is left to the convenience of the Parliamentary Opposition to ask questions of ministers. Responses are usually vague and inadequate. Official reports and reviews including those of the Auditor General and Contractor General are often criticised or ignored.

Lesser offences than the level of financial scandals, corruption, wastes, over-runs and mismanagement that have been stalking the public sector have been severely punished in the private sector.

Patriotic zeal

Aside from some of the ministers, our parliamentarians are essentially part-timers. Some have their own businesses to run. Others have demanding full-time employment, among whom are practising lawyers and trade unionists.

Of the rest, how many have professional training and qualifications that would have enabled them to earn better than $2.2 million annually in the private sector?

Let us stop treating parliamentary representation as a profession and give those of us with patriotic zeal an opportunity to serve. Perhaps the time has come to limit parliamentary representation to no more that two terms in one's lifetime.

I am, etc.,

LIONEL RUSSELL

Ensom City, St Catherine