Religious leaders ignore corruption in society

Just recently we have had the supply of rotten canned fish and substandard milk to our children. The greedy among us have no compassion except for their own pockets. Even our children are not safe from their unbelievable greed.

They, the greedy, and we, all know who they are, and they are destroying our nation and the future of our children.

These same greedy people make large contributions to temples from their illicit gains in order to absolve themselves.

I just find it strange that no monks have openly condemned these filthy, corrupt entities who call themselves Buddhists.

NOPPADON

BANGKOK

Officials do their best to make the country look bad

The Thai Authorities seem to be trying everything to make the Kingdom unpopular abroad. To mention a few incidents:

The inhuman treatment of Rohingya boat people and the indifferent reaction of the PM and his general, Anupong, who has cordial relations with the Burmese dictator Than Shwe.

The threat of denial of a re-entry visa to UNHCR ambassador Angelina Jolie because she showed compassion for the plight of those boat people and other refugees and asylum-seekers. (Talking about compassion occurs, apparently, only in Buddhist temples in Thailand.)

The images of an Australian writer in shackles, sentenced for lese majeste, showing the world how the Thai prison system is still in the Middle Ages.

Even with PM Abhisit at the helm, many more websites have been closed and censorship of movies has become stricter than it already was.

Exploitation of migrant workers all over the country. (They have few rights and the government refuses registration of them.)

Sending back of Hmong refugees to an uncertain and most likely cruel future in Laos.

The closure of the airports by PAD demonstrators last year. (How easy that was!)

NICK

BANGKOK

Get rid of incompetent workers as a rule

Re: "Let crisis bring out the best", February 22.

It would be nice if the spirit of compassion and sympathy prevailed over selfishness during these uncertain times. It would help preserve everyone's job and even out the burden of the recession.

The "spirit of sharing and sacrifice" as you put it, suggests that corporations implement long leaves, rather than layoffs. This would allow the company to retain everyone, rather than sacrifice a few for the benefit of many.

 Yes and no.

 There are those who deserve to stay and those who should be retrenched based on performance. This is true up and down the corporation, but particularly at the top, where bad decisions have reduced competitiveness.

 We must distinguish between poor performance and being compassionate and not mix the two. Poor performers should be laid off. They normally get very generous severance packages anyway, and are better off doing something they are good at. It is a question of balancing compassion with managing the consequences of bad performance.

 Successful business is based on "survival of the fittest". Sure compassion is still important, but let's not for a moment believe that equality and socialism in the workplace work. Just look at Japan, where lifetime employment, regardless of individual contributions to the business, guaranteed mediocrity and contributed to Japan's "Lost Decade" in the 1990s.

 I am not being cold-hearted and saying dump people during an economic slump to save costs. I am saying companies should be dumping poor performers as part of their corporate culture in good times and bad. The recession is not an excuse to preserve poor performers and ask them to share the load with good performers. Companies should have been culling their workforces all along. If they had, then maybe some of those poor performers would have been exited before they did damage to corporate performance.

 So go ahead and see if you can retain more of your workforce through extended leaves of absence, rather than layoffs. That is compassionate, humane and should be an underlying principle in these hard times. But an even better approach might be a combination of the two, where the bulk of solid performers are retained and the poor ones are identified and retrenched.

OUTRAGED TAXPAYER

BANGKOK