WE SAY viva to Minister of Economic Development Ibrahim Patel's plan to cap salaries of executives of companies receiving government support to help them weather the recession.

WE SAY viva to Minister of Economic Development Ibrahim Patel's plan to cap salaries of executives of companies receiving government support to help them weather the recession.

As Patel says, "... this is public money. We've got to show it is being used appropriately and cannot be a source of financing inappropriate executive pay".

It is in the economy's best interest to help ordinarily viable concerns survive tough economic cycles not of their making. But as we have seen in the US and Europe, executives tend to wrongly assume they are entitled to normal perks in abnormal and adverse conditions.

Too often they tend to get away with obscene amounts of money even when they run companies down. There can never be a good reason to reward executives and ask ordinary workers to tighten their belts.

What is good for the goose must be good for the gander.