Sajith faults Basil for insulting public servants

Sajith Premadasa

The Leader of Opposition Sajith Premadasa has vehemently condemned remarks made by Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa that public service is a burden to the nation.

“The Minister of Finance has stated that the public service has become too wide for the country to bear and that it is a burden to the country. We believe that this is also the position of the Government and we condemn that statement with contempt,” the Opposition Leader said in a statement.

“It is clear that the Government is preparing, directly or indirectly, to dissolve the public service in this country. The Minister made a popular proposal to raise the retirement age from 60 to 65 in the Budget, and the very next day, he said that the public service was a burden to the country. The minister who contradicts his own statement the next day is working in tandem with its own ridiculous budget proposal,” the statement added.

“We are not surprised that the Government treats public servants, who are crowned at the altar during elections, this way after achieving their objectives, because of this ungrateful nature of this Government.”

“The fact that public servants are considered a burden to the country today proves that the Government, which forgot the laudable and invincible intervention of the public service in catastrophic situations, including COVID-19, even before the end of the disaster, is opportunistic. There is no doubt the country will inevitably face a major crisis today had the Heads of Public Administration Divisions as well as Public Servants in many sectors, including Health, Defense, Transport, Postal, Sathosa, Samurdhi, Grama Niladhari, Public Health Inspectors, Family Health, Consumer Services did not fulfill their duties.

“However, the whole country knows who made the arbitrary recruitments to Government institutions without any planned program.”

The Opposition Leader reminded that the Government recruited 100,000 to the Public Service on a key promise of the Vision of Prosperity policy. In addition, 50,000 graduates were recruited. As a result, the percentage of Government tax revenue managed for salaries and pensions increased from 47% to 86%.

 “Although we agree on providing employment to the youth of the country, today the country has to experience the consequences of unplanned and arbitrary filling the heads of the public service in order to shape the agenda of political power under the guise of providing employment.”

“Raising the retirement age to 65 as per the budget proposals, will further increase it. All these are arbitrary, opportunistic actions taken by the Government and not planned actions. It is none other than the Government that has made the public service a burden due to inconsistent and absurd policies.

“What should the Government do immediately? What should be done according to the report of the Sub-Committee on Public Service Reforms is to

Strengthen productive public institutions;

Change the public administration principle and structure to improve productivity;

Create a public administration system that guarantees the effective formulation and evaluation of policies and programs and;

Redesign the functioning of public institutions in a technical and planned manner to fit the modernity

 “We vehemently oppose the Government’s shameless attempt to wash its hands of the wrongdoings on its own public servants, without regard to any of this. We see this statement as a severe slap in the face to the vast majority of public servants in this country who have been actively involved in the formation of the present Government and have played a pivotal role,” the Opposition leader said.