Foot excess staff salary bill | Daily News
Mangala directs State sector Heads

Foot excess staff salary bill

Over 7,500 personnel employed in Govt. institutions above cadre requirements

The Government has decided that the heads of state institutions should be responsible for paying the salaries to excess employees working under them.

“The Secretaries to Ministries, Heads of Departments, Chairpersons, executive officers and Accountants of Government Institutions should take the responsibility of paying salaries to redundant workers they have employed in addition to the approved cadre,” Director of Information, Ministry of Finance and Mass Media M. Ali Hassen said in a press release.

“At the same time, the Cabinet has also decided that making relevant statutory payments in time, such as, contributions to the Employees Provident Fund and the Employees Trust Fund of State Corporations, Statutory Boards and Government owned companies is also the responsibility of the heads of such institutions,” the release added.

“The Cabinet has taken these decisions when the Report of the Final Quarter of the State Sector Employees–2017 was submitted by Finance and Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera recently.

“It is reported that there are over 7,500 personnel employed in various government institutions above the cadre positions approved by the Management Services Department of the Treasury.

The statement went on to point out that it has been computed that there are currently 1,375,499 public servants employed in the entire state sector, including government ministries, departments, provincial councils, and local government institutions and other public enterprises, government owned institutions and state banks at the end of 2017.

“During 2017 alone, 23,224 persons were recruited to the state service. At the same time, 5,000 public servants had retired from the services while another 246 were dismissed on various disciplinary actions during the same time.

“It was also revealed that there are a large number of vacancies at senior executive level positions of the state sector. The Director General of Management Services Department stated that the main reason for this situation is that there is a limited number of officers who have completed the required number of years in service to be eligible for promotions.

“There are 74,872 approved positions for development officers service in the state sector and nearly 18,000 positions out of them are currently vacant. However, the Director General of the Management Service Department further said that it was observed during staff review meetings that development officers attached to certain institutions are not assigned on a particular subject or are not given a specific job of work.

“In addition, there are a large number of vacancies in the Engineering, Technical and Technological sectors of the government service but attracting candidates to fill such positions has become a difficult task as the private sector pays more than what is paid to such professionals in the public sector,” the statement added. Meanwhile, the Chairman of the Government Nursing Officers’ Association Saman Rathnapriya said the government needs to further study before going ahead with the decision on making heads of state institutions responsible to pay the salaries of redundant workers.

Responding to the Daily News, Rathnapriya said that although the decision was a good one it may not be practically applicable to some service sectors including Health, Education, Postal and Transportation. Rathnapriya also said that the decision taken by the government perhaps is applicable to specific state institutions, however, even then proper surveys and data analysis should be done beforehand. 


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