New Presidential Salaries Commission
View(s):Sri Lanka will introduce a national policy on wages of employees for the first time in history to make salary revisions applicable to both the public and private sectors.
A Presidential Salaries Commission is to be created by President Mahinda Rajapaksa within two weeks to devise this national policy and settle salary anomalies of employees, government officials said.
The appointment of the commission, which is a 2013 budget proposal and should have happened soon after November 2012, aims to compile a common policy for salaries of both public and private sector.
A senior official of the Finance Ministry said the government had taken this decision since such a necessity had arisen due to massive discrepancies prevailing in the salary scales between the public and private sectors. The salary scales of the public sector would be updated to match with the modern conditions and the commission will provide guidance to the private sector to devise salary scales for the employees, he added.
Treasury Secretary Dr. P.B. Jayasundera who was very keen in introducing the national policy on wages has issued directives to relevant officials to find the possibility of introducing far reaching reforms in payment of wages, he added.
The viability of introducing a weekly payment system for employees will also be under consideration, he revealed.
The national commission will decide on all these aspects, he said.
Anton Marcus, General Secretary of the Free Trade Zones & General Services Employees’ Union (FTZ&GSEU) told the Business Times that he had brought to the notice of the president at last week’s pre- budget meeting with unions the urgent need to appoint the commission.
He said he had proposed that independent trade union representation should be included in the proposed commission and also urged that a Rs. 5000 budgetary allowance for employees be announced in the 2014 budget.
Mr. Marcus said that the government should intervene in devising salary scales of private sector employees as there is a huge disparity between the wages of public and private sector workers.
He noted that only top executives in the private sector are enjoying high salaries and perks.
Private sector employers were of the view that the salaries of workers should be determined in accordance with market forces but this is not valid today, he said adding that the difference between the wages of public and private sector workers was around Rs. 10,000.
Labour Minister Gamini Lokuge said that members of the commission will be appointed by the president and measures are being taken to increase the salaries of certain sections of employees in the private sector by 40 to 50 per cent.
These salary increases are implemented through Wages Boards that decide the salaries of the particular trade.
Meanwhile the Inter Company Employees Union (ICEU) continued to demand a salary hike in line with the increase in fuel, electricity and transport costs.
ICEU head Wasantha Samarasinghe said that the minimum salary in lower segments of the private sector is Rs. 9,625 while the minimum salary of a lower level public sector worker is over Rs. 20,000. However at an upper level, private sector salaries are much higher than for the same public sector-level officials.
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