President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is gone. He has left the country in shambles. Unfortunately the sycophants and those who were under obligation to follow the law of the jungle are still around.

There is a total breakdown in adherence to laws, rules and regulations thanks to Ministers asserting their power to hire and fire. The Ministers do not respect the need for public servants to adhere to their rules and regulations. I think the most important change that has to be introduced, is to ensure that the Public Service and the Judiciary are made sacrosanct and allowed to operate without any political interference.

In days gone by we had a Civil Service which had qualified individuals who knew what was expected from them and they were allowed to do their work without political interference. The observance of closed services where expertise was required guaranteed promotional prospects to those who were in those departments and also encouraged them to learn what was required of them, the need to adhere to Financial and Administrative rules and perform their duties with a sense of pride.

Ministers who began to issue orders to public officials to deviate from the rules are to blame more than their stooges whom they appointed to various posts in the Public Service. This must end as a matter of urgency. All the political appointees to key positions in Ministries should be replaced by employees who have been in those departments and know the operating procedures.

If the quality of the people in the service is deficient then retraining of people who are in the service should be undertaken, or bright young graduates recruited for training. Some of the departments which are crucial to an efficient public service being restored, are the Police, Department of Inland Revenue, Customs, Labour, Civil Aviation, Agriculture and Environment. Recruitment to the Administrative Service and promotions from within should follow clear rules which are adhered to and only the Public Service Commission should have authority to look into any complaints. The Commissions need to revitalized.

Another issue to be addressed is the demands for salary revisions made by ad hoc groups. The Salaries and Cadre Commission should have broad-based expertise to evaluate the demands of Unions. One key to having equal treatment would be to first set up a commission to grade all jobs in the public service according to the value they bring to the community.

Till the 1960’s salaries were graded by the government and any demand for an increase should be heard only by the Salaries and Cadres Commission. Rewards for efficiency should be part of the rewards structure in the public sector. A connected problem regarding salary demands is the existence of a Union regime which is fragmented, and especially in the Public Service, serving divergent political interests. The need for Joint Unions structures at Departmental level would help to make those at different levels of a department refrain from maintaining selfish interests in the matter of revisions.

In his plan for economic reforms called Regaining Sri Lanka in 2002 Ranil Wickremesinghe, I think mentioned a figure around 650,000 as the norm for the public service. We now have more than double that number and a standing army which is disproportionate to the size and population of our country. To reduce numbers is not easy and I think the strategy followed by the US after the Vietnam war should be food for thought.

The US government encouraged and supported soldiers to return to education and training which resulted in many of them starting new careers very successfully. The government has to seriously consider retraining programmes for all displaced employees. Studies should be initiated with preliminary discussions with public servants who would be interested in retraining to ascertain their interests and how they could be met with a win-win result for the economy and the employees.

The Skills Development Fund could be utilized to train displaced employees with the help of the private sector and the Chambers could help with ideas of placement whether locally or overseas. Restructuring is painful but will be a necessary consequence of putting right our economy and politicians must look beyond winning elections and keeping voters complacent about their future prospects.

In some developed countries where the Unions are efficient and vibrant, retraining of employees is part of their mandate. We need to seek their co-operation in the process of restructuring. We should not follow the easy path of providing displaced workers with compensation and the challenge should be to either teach them relevant skills or convert them into entrepreneurs. The manner in which the message of change is communicated has to be handled skilfully and perhaps the ILO could help to train Public Officials who would be in the forefront of selling the change.

Franklyn Amerasinghe
(The writer is a former Secretary General of the Employers Federation of Ceylon from 1990-2000 and served the ILO as Senior Employers Specialist for East Asia post-retirement)