Coalition and apposition MKs found common ground in the Knesset in blistering attacks on the government bureaucracy. The subject was debated on separate motions introduced by Amnon Rubinstein of the Shai faction and Likud MK Yosef Rom. Rubinstein observed that since 1948 the bureaucracy has grown four times as fast as the population and the result has been a steady deterioration of public services.
Menachem Savidor of Likud contended that overstaffed government agencies were more harmful than the manpower shortage. Every superfluous civil servant “puts spokes in the wheels of government” in order to justify his job, Savidor said. Another Likud MK, Meir Cohen, urged the consolidation of fiscal agencies which now deal separately with such matters as the value added tax, income tax and national insurance. He also suggested that government officials refrain from making telephone calls in order to keep their lines open for incoming calls.
Former Transport Minister Meir Amit of Shai said the only cure for an inflated bureaucracy was to give the officials responsible for hiring people the authority to fire them, or promote them. There should be fewer public servants but better ones and they should work harder, Amit said. Deputy Finance Minister Yehezkel Flomiorose to the defense of the bureaucracy, though without much conviction. He protested against the “wholesale denigration of civil servants.”
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