The canker that is the public service

From Ceylon Today

Yesterday (19 November) this newspaper reported a story of 2,000 Colombo Municipality workers being paid for doing no work!

This is not something new. Almost everyone knows that the public service, whether it be local councils such as municipalities or government departments such as Railways, or boards such as the Ceylon Electricity Board, and the list goes on, are overstaffed.

This canker received life nearly 50 years ago, in 1956, when the MEP coalition led by the founder of the SLFP, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike swept the polls that year. Almost everything under the sun was beginning to be nationalized then, 'starting' with the bus services, a year later, in 1957.

After a brief hiatus in the 1965-70 period when the capitalist leaning UNP was elected to power, nationalization once more gathered momentum after the United Front coalition government, led by his widow Sirima swept the polls that year.

Nationalization then spread its tentacles to the plantation sector. Even anti-government newspapers weren't spared in this nationalization process. But this trend was reversed when the Opposition UNP won a landslide win in the 1977 polls.

Nationalization was halted, except for the nationalization of 'Buharis,' a popular Muslim eatery in Maradana, for apparently being pro-SLFP.

Outsourcing of work to the private sector was then begun. This practice also encapsulated local councils. Their workers were allowed to idle, while work was contracted to the private sector. Nevertheless, such local council workers were paid their salaries, for doing no work!

Such waste, in the form of paying salaries to council workers for doing no work, while at the same time remunerating private contractors to do the work which was formerly attended to, or was expected to be attended to, by local council workers, was possible, in large part due to a flood of foreign aid received by the government of the day, that is after the capitalist UNP was elected to power in 1977.

Encouraging foreign investments and offering 'golden handshakes' to those in the public service was the ethos of the UNP. This way, successive UNP governments since 1977 tried to relieve the burden on the exchequer.

Monies dished out from the exchequer to the public service are essentially public money. Those are monies either in the form of grants, which however are very much less now, or foreign loans, more often than not obtained on commercial terms nowadays and local borrowings, such as by selling Treasury (T) bills. A portion comprising 12.5% of T bill and T bond outstanding are also now open to foreign investments.

A large portion of the public service, such as paying 2,000 Colombo Municipality workers for doing no work, is met by taxes. Ironically, this local council is controlled by the capitalist leaning UNP!

All is fair, not only applies to 'love and war,' but also to politics!

And those taxes are not only paid by the rich, but also by the poor as well, in the form of indirect taxes.

Indirect taxes are even paid by the beggar in the street. Even the morsel of bread eaten by him is taxed. So also the plain tea he drinks. In the event he drinks his tea with a 'little bit' of sugar, that 'little bit' of sugar is also taxed.

So, even the beggar who walks the streets of 'Sri Lanka/Colombo' also helps to upkeep those 2,000 local council workers who are being paid to do no work.

Nevertheless, a chief reason for the defeat of the then UNP/UNF government in the 2004 polls is attributed to it reducing employment in the public service to a few hundred thousand and freezing recruitment to the government service.

Ipso facto, a prime reason for the UPFA government to have had won the polls that year was due to its promise of opening up the public sector once more for recruitment. Currently the public sector counts for nearly around 1.5 million employees. They also include the 'drift wood, dry wood and dead wood' working in such an agency (public service) such as the 2,000 workers employed by the Colombo Municipality for doing no work.

However, with elections round the corner, there is a slim or no chance of such workers being made redundant. In fact, opposition leader Ranil Wickremasinghe, who was responsible for freezing recruitment to the public sector and shedding excess fat in government, in the period December 2001 to April 2004, when he was in power, has now promised a million jobs in the event he's elected to power.

Productivity in the public service is secondary. What is important is their vote.

What therefore is needed to counter such ills is public opinion, effective public opinion against waste and corruption. This will help to stamp out further bloating of an already bloated public sector and, who knows, may even help to sway an election!