The very recent hot topic for news in our media has been the pay of CEOs in bank and financial institutions. No sooner the central bank issued a notice called directive, the wowed aspects of their pay spilled to the public gaze. CEOs started to cry a foul by the central bank in the D area of their respective bank boards. NRB people tried to defend their move claiming nothing less than ˜this directive will not have any effect to the pay CEOs are now enjoying. But this neither stopped the media hype nor did the crying pitch of CEOs reduce.
You may wonder what is so big deal about it? Why is everyone from the governor of Nepal Rastra Bank and the government secretaries to the media after the CEO's salary? Are CEOs really overpaid? For that matter, are the rank-and-file workers underpaid?
Only in a cursory look, one may find that it is not the question of CEOs getting less or more but the fact of the matter is : these CEOs are simply uncharismatic and don't know how to buy great things with small pay. Lack of this quality in them raises larger question of would these people at the helm help the institution earn more by spending less.
Take an example of a government section officer or an undersecretary; he might hardly draw more than Rs. fifteen thousand a month. But in five years, he will have at least a new house in Kathmandu, a four wheeler and a wife who wears ornaments of a few hundred thousand, if not millions, rupees.
And, the most important thing is, he never complaints about the salary, and the government unlike the Rastra Bank does not send out a memo to reduce his pay. Why can't these folks called CEOs have that sort of creative acumen to manage things like that on their own? They surely lack ability to manage and choose to beg at least not to cut what they get.
By now it is evident that our CEOs are unable to pull and pool the recourses. Even worse, they don't learn from the big people. Look at how our supply minister manages his supply of petrol free of cost from the Oil Corporation. And how unremorsefully the chief of the Corporation, who is also the CEO of another breed, helps meet the end of his patron is more of a lesson. Having seen so many deficiencies in them, it is hard to believe that most CEOs in Nepal's BF's are intelligent, have advanced degrees often from one of the top universities in the world and work some sixty or more hours a week.
Therefore, to convince at least to their hawkish supervisor called Ratra Bank that they are deserving enough to draw a handsome salary and perks, these CEOs must mend their ways that suits the indigenous soil. They must stop demanding this and that facility or mercy from the Rastra Bank. Instead, they can learn from the supervisors there. Drawing salary purse from the office, many NRB supervisors spend their day dealing with personal business of bonds or share trade or reaches to the political mentor of the choice. Effectively, s/he would earn in a day what a CEO earns in a month. Isnt it something to be inspired about ?
