| Editorial | ||||
 |
||||
A
piece of advice While the sums paid to these advisers seem princely when compared to the beggarly wages average public servants of this country receive, there cannot be much argument that advisers to Presidents or Prime Ministers who must run the Government of the day, need to be well paid. Successive Presidents, from President J.R. Jayewardene onwards had mediocre administrators carrying the burdens of high office and the country's problems. The Presidential Secretariat was never the efficient epicentre of Government it was meant to be. Political leaders who have wrecked the public service have therefore had to rely more and more on persons from outside for even basic administrative chores such as drafting a letter, writing a report to the World Bank or dictating a speech. Often, the dollar salaries paid to these advisers come out of the aid packages given to the country. Details of these arrangements are usually kept under wraps. Very little information is available as to whether these are the strings attached to these packages, or whether they are downright rip-offs where the people will ultimately have to pay for their services under the disguise of loans. Former Prime Minister Wickremesinghe justifies the appointment of his advisers saying they were the ones who prepared the Regaining Sri Lanka report which clinched for the country US $ 4.5 Billion in foreign aid. And the incumbent Treasury Secretary has obtained the services of his former professor Guss Papaneke under a US Aid programme to help write the UPFA Government's November budget. What happens in the process, however, is that many persons appointed as advisers do nothing but sponge on the public purse. There has also been a tendency to rely on overrated foreign experts for assignments that could easily have been done by locals, except that our leaders see some magic in these foreigners, artificial and hollow though it may turn out to be. During the Ranil Wickremesinghe period there was a surfeit of them, often seen sipping coffee at World Trade Centre cafes to while away their time. Huge sums have been paid by both the Wickremesinghe Government , and the Kumaratunga Government, to British public relations firms. Take the case of a Singaporean ad agency hired by the Wickremesinghe Government - and retained by the Kumaratunga Government, to promote tourism. Ask any travel agent if the colossal sum of money has been well spent. If any Government wants advice from Singapore it might be worth hiring Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. President Jayewardene did, in fact, seek his advice and Singapore sent their Deputy Prime Minister at the time Goh Kwen Swe to visit the country and provide a report. His report was never made public, but it was discussed by the Jayewardene cabinet, and his recommendations were largely ignored. Rather than have ad-hoc advisers, Sri Lanka could take a leaf from some other countries, including Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan and India where there exists a method by which the crème of the public and even the private sector is identified at a mid-career stage purely on merit and not just seniority in service or political connections, then groomed by being sent overseas to world class Universities and Management Centres for advanced training in different disciplines and inducted to serve the Heads of Government on handsome though not outrageous salary packages . These countries have established their own top-level Management Institutes, Institutes of Technology that harness this elite corps that then feeds them into the offices of Heads of Government, Cabinet Ministers - and even the private sector. They are given opportunities of spending time abroad, earning some money, and training at the same time to return home for the service of the nation. Unfortunately, this is a two-way street, and many Sri Lankans who have gone overseas on such trainig exercises simply do not return preferring the greener pastures abroad. Just as much as the private sector all over the world has agreed that Human Resources Development is a major contributory factor in the development of their companies, the Government need also to invest some thought and money in this field of increasing importance. The country has had just about enough of this tit-for-tat slanging match between the Government and the Opposition, while the whole edifice of public administration has all but collapsed. The time for throwing mud and scoring points is long gone. The arduous task of nation building is what is at hand. |
||||
ADVERTISING
OFFICE
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT No.
47, W.A.D. Ramanayake Mawatha, Colombo 2, Sri Lanka.
Copyright © 2001 Wijeya Newspapers
Ltd. All rights reserved. |
