New chapter of ‘Yahapalanaya’?

During the first round of Cabinet oath-taking, President Maithripala Sirisena announced the formation of a new independent commission to appoint heads of State enterprises. This, if implemented in a transparent way, could be the first step to depoliticising the public service.   

It would also be a positive precursor to the formation of the Constitutional Council that will appoint, among others, a public service commission, that will ostensibly take on the task of merit-based appointments rather than allowing ministers to slot in their loyalists.  

Successive Governments have worked to undermine and eradicate checks and balances that were in place to keep public employees separate from politicians. Over the last few decades the political system has eaten into the public service to the extent that public servants also depend on political patronage to get ahead in their careers, resulting in public interest and independence being left by the wayside.

Since the Rajapaksa regime came to power in 2005, the numbers in public service have more than doubled, reaching 1.3 million as of December 2012. 

In other words, one in every 15 of the total population is now on the Government payroll. Most of the increases have been reported in the security forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, Police and Civil Defence), education and health services.

As think tanks have pointed out in successive reports, there are no scientific studies to evaluate the need for and productivity of these public servants. Almost all Sri Lankan governments have tended to be proud to proclaim that they have increased public services and employment therein, despite the fact that this was contributing to a fundamentally-flawed fiscal framework, which is now becoming increasingly unaffordable. One example is how the Mattala airport has 400 staff to handle five or six daily passengers. 

When the Government dishes out salary increments they too receive it regardless of the complete lack of productivity. Though the unproductivity of the Mattala Airport is not the fault of those that work there, the question of productivity still needs to be dealt with.  The reports argue that when successive governments were unwilling or unable to introduce economic reforms that would increase private sector job creation, they found the public sector to be a convenient employment creation agency.  However, the macroeconomic instability arising from the current fiscal framework calls for a radical rethink of the traditional approach to the Government being the employer of first resort. No program of public service restructuring will be sustainable in this country unless it is supplemented by a package of other reforms which generates rapid expansion of private sector activity. But reforms of this nature are usually painful and dangerous for a Government since it can be swiftly voted out in the next round of elections. As the public sector became more ungainly it sprouted new departments in a frenzy of ineptitude that is now freezing critical elements of the economy such as investment and exports, leaving political parties to mull ways of sidelining them and appointing amalgamated offices to get the work done.

Yet in this case the cure is more expensive and complicated than the disease and every party that comes into power, irrespective of its hue, will continue to subjugate the public service for its own aims. This is also another reason why Sri Lanka cannot maintain national development agendas, continuing to stumble from one term to the next, at war with itself.