Prostituting The Public Service 

By Sonali Wijeratne –AUGUST 27, 2021

Sonali Wijeratne

Once in a while, albeit even a State Minister of the Government (Dr. Nalaka Godakahewa quoted in the Press during August 2021) utters an explicit truth viz. The State Minister said: “There are over 1.4 mn public sector workers. There are a large number of pensioners. Annually, we need about Rs 1.2 trillion to pay salaries and pensions. In 2020, our annual income was Rs 1.4 trillion. We are left with Rs 200 bn to provide health services, education, transport et al.” It is a fact that the annual public service wage and pension bill has surpassed the One Trillion Rupee mark for the first time in history with the budgetary outlay for both Public Sector Salaries and Pensions showing a significant rise from 2019 to date.

It is ironic that these extraordinary revelations are made in the context of the current Government continuing to upload an already over-staffed top heavy Public Service of over 1 Million with yet more massive injections of 150,000 public servants! This programme to give jobs for 50,000 unemployed graduates and another 100,000 so-called “poor” applicants with less than GCE Ordinary Level qualifications was first mooted as a pre-election promise in 2019.However, the Chairman of the Elections Commission  directed its postponement due to the declaration of the General Election in 2019.The expectation of employment opportunity would no doubt have supported the poll in favour of  the incumbent Government which has now commenced the said programme without work study, or needs assessment, but presumably purely on the basis of amassing electoral support for future victory at the Elections! But where will such short term maneuverings by Politicians to keep themselves in Power at the expense of the country’s steadily depleting resources lead us the citizens of Sri Lanka?

The increasing ingestion of unemployed graduates and other grades into the Public Service outside the required cadre cannot be healthy or useful when most of them find themselves in an overstaffed environment with little substantive work to do. The relative lack of challenging work occupations and inadequate training to go around leads to a gross misallocation of resources with superfluous workforce engaged in repetitive replication of task. Sooner or later this huge multitude Public Servants in a Job Bank finds itself with no real opportunity, ideal or goal to make a worthwhile contribution. Their only recourse then is to latch on to the privileges’ of the Public Service as Security of employment, shorter working hours and extensive leave entitlement, Pension, less work, etc.

Many castigate the bloated Public Sector in Sri Lanka as generally lethargic, corrupt and parasitic. What else could one expect when politicians of every hue continuously use what was once an Elite Meritocracy as a job bank to get more votes for themselves to win in the short run to the next Elections!  Even the most enthusiastic, qualified youth selected to the Public Sector is bound to encounter demoralization, and dissipation of his or her talents when faced with such self-defeating and destructive manner of recruitment often imbued with politicization and nepotism to boot. We no longer have Permanent Secretaries heading Ministries which was the hall mark of the previous era of the Ceylon Civil Service. Even the Constitution has been changed in the 1970s to facilitate all Secretaries of the Ministries to be hand-picked for appointment and changed at will by the political authorities sans their ability, seniority or official experience and qualifications! Therefore in order to safeguard their prized privileges’, position and perks of office, most Secretaries of Ministries are apt take the easy way out of appeasing the political authority and not taking a stand against irregularities.

Moreover It is no surprise that in recent times, the Government seems quick to placate a group of vociferous Public Servants in the Education sector who take to the streets, howling vengeance on the State if their so called demands for wage increases are not met without ascertaining whether there is a genuine justification or need for such pay hike! It is a fact that these teachers willfully neglect their helpless students in a crisis situation virtually, holding the people and government of this country to ransom and taking undue advantage of the Pandemic situation by denying online education to innocent school children already bereft of a normal education. At the same time they have become super spreaders of Covid-19 in public demonstrations dis-regarding all norms of curtailing the Pandemic which is at its highest. All the while, it is a fact that after bringing formal online education to a standstill, they are engaging in the lucrative practice of private tuition on line and earning a mint owing to increased demand for such services.

Since placating the Teachers at any cost seems to be the intention of our Politicians, even the simple fact of whether there is any truth in the so called allegations of anomalous salary in the Education Sector is not the focus of the Government or that giving undue salary rise to teachers, will upset the delicate balanced equilibrium of the salary structure across the entire Public Sector and result in further anomalies and require an all round increase of salaries to the entire Public Sector.

The  previous so called Yahapalanaya regime too had in turn feted the entire Public Service with more than 100% pensionable and salary increase during 2016 – 2020. It is now the turn of the present Government already saddled with a huge economic crisis replete with debt burden, intractable budget deficit and balance of payments woes to promise another round of public sector salary increases with the next Budget in November this year. Anything and everything to survive in power on the horns of the Populist vote.

Such cynical callous disregard for economic imperatives seem designed to win the confidence of the bovine masses in the short term in time for the next General and Presidential Elections.

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