News
Aimless recruitment stuffs public sector with under-performers
With thousands of arts graduates flocking onto the streets demanding state jobs, it has become a herculean task for government, recruiting 16,800 unemployed graduates this week, to fit them into posts requiring widely varying skill sets.
Thousands of arts graduates flocked to the streets demanding state jobs. Pic by Ishanka Sunimal
One graduate, who completed his major in Fine Arts, has been assigned to report to work at the Irrigation Department in the north.
In Jaffna, more than 4,000 graduates from state universities have been waiting years for jobs. This week, following an interview process, 1,253 graduates were included in the government recruitment initiative. To date, 950 of them have been sent letters of appointment and asked to report to work.
“It is true that the majority of the unemployed graduates are arts graduates and there is a shortage of science graduates,” Jaffna District Secretary N. Vedanayahan said.
“Since all the vacant cadre positions at the District Secretariat are filled we are planning to assign them to various departments for purposes such as project monitoring and research that come under Provincial or Central governments.”
It came to light this week that at least 104 of the 1,253 selected graduates from Jaffna were already in state service, appointed to the Provincial Government, and had applied for appointment as Development Officers (DO) without resigning from their existing jobs or following the procedure set out in the Establishment Code for applications for new jobs.
A senior official from the Chief Secretariat of Northern Provincial Council said most of those who tried to secure DO jobs were already in employment through the Provincial Government across the northern region but had applied in the current recruitment round in order to secure jobs near home.
Applying for another state job while in state service without following due process is a punishable offence with a possible jail term, according to the Establishment Code. Those found guilty can be stripped of both state jobs and be ordered to repay the total salary drawn at the old post.
The new appointments for unemployed graduates were made despite the Auditor-General’s grave concerns about the performance of DOs already in state service following year-long internships at various departments.
In a Special Audit report made available recently, the Auditor-General’s Department said the public service had ballooned with the enrolment of graduates as DOs and the efficiency of these recruits was a matter of great concern. A programme to measure the performance of DOs was recommended.
The report, titled “Special Report on the Performance of the Development Officers in the Public Service” measured 41,668 DOs.
It found that although DO service is considered field work, a fifth (22 per cent) of DOs were stationed officers.
More than 86 per cent of those officers were Arts graduates and three-quarters of them female.
They had undertaken two to nine projects under supervision during their time in government service – how many years, and is 2-9 projects a bad thing?.
As a result of an annual transfer process not being implemented the officers had stayed at the same positions for long periods and this had affected their performance, the report said, adding, “it was confirmed that the expected performance from the service of DOs had not been fulfilled”.
The current major graduate recruitment initiative is the second undertaken by this government, coming after Cabinet approval in 2016 for the recruitment of 20,000 graduates. The first phase of recruitment, last year, was for 3,200 graduates and this year’s intake of 16,800 includes a specification of 800 graduates who have taken external degrees and who routinely complain they are marginalised in recruitment campaigns.
According to a letter of appointment seen by The Sunday Times, the new would-be DOs are informed that they would be paid a monthly starting salary of Rs. 20,000 for a year. They are instructed to report to a particular department without any consideration of whether their educational qualifications meet the job role. Under the previous government, DOs were paid a starting salary of Rs. 10,000.
A senior official at the Ministry of Public Administration told The Sunday Times on the condition of anonymity that, currently, there are no clear job descriptions applied to the recruitment of DOs and they are slotted haphazardly into the already excessive state workforce.
The top official in charge of the graduate recruitment initiative said he believed the Auditor-General’s concerns would be allayed by the establishment of the Sri Lanka Development Officers Service, a regulatory mechanism within the Establishment Code of Public Administration Ministry.
“It is true that following the first phase of recruiting 3200 DO officers, some of them left the job soon after they were brought under the Ministry of Public Administration,” Additional Secretary (Administration) at the Ministry of National Policies, Economic Affairs, Resettlement and Rehabilitation, Northern Province Development and Youth Affairs, Asanga Dayaratne said.
For the first time in the public service sector, newly-appointed DOs would be required to complete work-related study and assignments assigned to them online, Mr. Dayaratne said.
A group of graduates, including some who had followed external studies at state universities, this week lodged a complaint at the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka branch in Jaffna claiming they had been subject to discrimination in not being included in recent cohorts of graduate recruitment initiatives by government.