Financial Times

Need for national policy on pay scales
Some public sector wages higher than private sector
Believe it or not – the public sector pays much better salaries than the private sector; at least when it comes to a minimum wage. Government hospitals, for example, pay a minimum wage of Rs 12,000 per month for labourers in addition to other payments while the same category of person in the private sector would attract Rs 5,000 or less.

The disparity however ends there. In most cases the gap between the labourer and middle-level management in the public sector is small: a doctor for example starting at Rs 20 000 while in the private sector, a senior corporate executive gets a much higher salary.

The General Services Employees Union (GSEU) said that it is becoming clearly evident that the notion that private sector employee salaries should be determined by market forces – as private sector employers often say – is not suitable at all for a country like Sri Lanka.

“As a result of allowing market forces to decide the salary levels of employees in the private sector without giving due consideration to the high inflationary rates caused by the globalised economy, the minimum monthly salary for the private sector employees remains at less than Rs 5,000 while that in the public sector is Rs 11,600,” the GSEU said.

In a letter to President Mahinda Rajapaksa, GSEU Joint Secretary Anton Marcus has urged the need for a national policy on salaries embracing the private sector as well. He said the General Council of the union on April 2 focused its attention on a recent presidential decision to appoint a committee and an advisory board for the purpose of formulating a National Policy on Salaries with a view to resolving the problems of salary anomalies in the public sector.

The letter said that the Wages Boards system is obsolete and not consistent with the socio-economic conditions and consumer requirements of today.
It said in the context of a huge gap between the salaries in the public and private sectors, the formulation of a national policy on salaries confining it to the public sector will not only make it cease to be a national policy but it will even cause a situation of greater crises.

“Moreover private sector workers engaged in the manufacture of products which generate the country’s wealth have been subjected to a grave social injustice by maintaining their salaries at a level incompatible with the price-inflationary situation prevailing in the country,” the letter said.

Back to Business