Recently President Ranil Wickremesinghe stated that the salaries of public servants will be increased through the next budget which will be presented to the parliament next Monday. The President requested the private sector to increase the salaries of private sector employees accordingly. We talk about the private sector, which is the real breadwinner of the nation.
According to the prominent Economist who was attached to the Management Faculty of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura Prof. Janaka Kumarasinghe, and several other prominent and popular economists and scholars attached to local and foreign universities, the Sri Lankan workforce in the private sector improved and pushed upwards the Sri Lankan economy while the Sri Lankan state sector pull it downward and weaken it. They proved this with all relevant updated statistics during a live television programme telecast over the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation some time ago.
Therefore there is no argument at all about the accuracy of this statement. Even a kindergarten child can understand this simple truth just by looking at how the state sector and the private sector operate and observing the outcome of both sectors often revealed in the COPE meetings and telecast over all television channels. By now, the entire country knows very well that it is the private sector that feeds the state sector with great difficulties, and it is the public sector which acts like a parasite in this country for the past 75 years.
The President took this fact into serious consideration and requested the private sector employers to increase the salaries of private sector employees once the salaries of the public sector increased from the next budget. Exactly knowing that the salaries of public sector employees would be increased from the next budget, cunning trade unions in the public sector stopped working and brought public servants into the streets in order to get the credit.
When considering the past behaviour of the private sector, especially the semi-government institutions, it is 100 per cent sure that there is a possibility for them NOT to increase the salaries of the private sector employees. The 2015 Government increased the salaries of the public servants by Rs. 10,000 and 99.99 private sector employees did not receive even a cent.
Thereafter a few small salary increases were given to public servants from time to time, but the private sector employees did not receive any salary increase at all. What happened is some private and semi-government institutions rescheduled their usual annual insignificant salary increases given through Collective Agreements to match the time the Government increased the salaries of the public servants. Using this tactic they misled the private sector employees but never gave even a cent in addition to the usual annual insignificant salary increases given under the Collective Agreements. Those insignificant salary increases were given because they were unavoidable.
In addition to huge salary increases, the public sector employees received several other increases to their allowances such as uniform allowance, risk allowance, transport allowance, food allowance etc. Altogether they, especially nurses received around Rs. 25,000 salary increase during the past five or ten years. But the private sector employees including nurses in the private sector did not receive anything at all.
When considering the situation that existed during the past, it is a must to enact a new law in order to make it compulsory for the private sector employers to increase the salaries of private sector employees by a reasonable amount. Otherwise, they will never increase the salaries of the private sector employees.
Anyone can very clearly see that both public-sector and private sector employees have the same expenses. Both public servants and private sector employees pay the same price for one kilogram of rice, one packet of milk powder, one kilogram of red dhal, one litre of fuel etc. Therefore employees in both sectors should receive the same amount of salary increases. Since it is not practical, the private sector employees should be given a significant salary increase with the salary increase to be given to the public servants from the next budget.
There is another extremely important factor that needs to be considered when making it compulsory for private sector employers to increase salaries of the private sector employees. Almost all public servants do some other jobs and businesses in addition to their employment in the state sector and earn money. They can do it because they never dedicate themselves to their duties and they neglect their duties all the time during the past 75 years. They have plenty of time to do other things because they have been paid for their attendance and not for their workload. Therefore, they make sure that their `In’ and `Out’ are marked on time. During the eight hours, they do their private work and do the official duties only if they have time. But the employees in the private sector are NOT that lucky. They have to kill themselves 24/7 to earn half of the salaries of the public servants and look after those parasites. This situation needs to be changed or laws need to be enacted as soon as possible to make it compulsory to pay adequate salary increases to the private sector employees.
