An old fun song belted out by British soldiers had the refrain “and the navy gets the gravy while the army gets the beans, beans, beans”.
We have no navy and I’m not sure that anyone of the security forces is getting any gravy. But from what I hear, the armed forces are getting beans all right, especially when it come to allowances.
The forces have been very much in the news recently and very much so over the past week. One of the first things that the Labour government did was to appoint a unit to consider grievances alleged to cover the time the Nationalists were in office.
Details of quite a number of alleged grievances were submitted with a large number of the allegations found to be justified.
The government itself created a number of new grievances with the way it went about giving an army officer accelerated promotions up to the top rank of brigadier, in the process alleging that he had been held back from full training abroad by the outgoing government.
Talking of grievances, the Ombudsman felt very aggrieved that the government felt his office should not deal with alleged grievances submitted by members of the armed forces.
So much so that he went to the law courts to air his feelings. That grieved the responsible minister a lot. He said he would be replying in the same law courts but, meanwhile, pointed out that there was an Act of Parliament which aggrieved army members could use, stressing that the government was not preventing anyone from airing their views.
The Opposition cried foul. Its spokesman even claimed that this situation, which had prompted the Ombudsman to growl in the law courts, was an attack on democracy. The accusation seems exaggerated, given that no one was preventing the Ombudsman from exercising his right of action as he deemed fit.
Above all, speaking of democracy, the government has just legislated to extend to uniformed personnel the right of joining a trade union, with no limitation on rank, something not dreamed of by the Nationalists over a span of 25 years in office.
If a manifestly unfair situation exists, the authorities should set it right themselves
The clear limitation, which, presumably, the Opposition agrees with, is that uniformed members of trade unions did not thereby have the right to take industrial action.
This past week, the armed forces have also been in the news because of another accelerated promotion. I do not know how the need for such acceleration comes about. If the responsible authorities feel that there is a case, they should state it, even though aggrieved bypassed officers now have the democratic right to request the trade union of their choice to speak out on their behalf.
The armed forces have also been in the news because, last week, they took possession of a brand new helicopter – the first time they will be working with new, rather than second hand, equipment.
This is where beans are once again served at the army table. The helicopter will require trained pilots to fly it. Yet, I understand that those who will be training them and the pilots themselves receive only paltry allowances for their labour.
That should not be the case. The government will rightly say that this was another bad situation inherited from the Nationalist government. The finicky within it might also point out that such grievances can now be raised at trade union level. Such replies are too glib.
If a manifestly unfair situation exists, the authorities should set it right themselves. That is what good governance means. There would be costs involved. But are there not costs in everything? And if injustices are not righted, in the armed forces and elsewhere, might not that lead to debilitating discontent and also a possible drain of experienced resources?
The old beans song is not alive anymore. It should not be resuscitated in Malta.
The government should do what is right without delay.