Transfer to Peradeniya!
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Continuing protests and holidays dominate Sri Lanka’s public service.
Jayantha is from a village in Kandy and works as an office assistant in a university in Colombo. He is a father of two little children, while he must look after his elderly mother, who is sick too. As Jayantha is working in Colombo, his wife must attend to all family matters at home, including children’s schooling and her mother-in-law’s treatments.
Jayantha’s immediate superior is a professor and the head of a department of studies in the university. Intermittently, he has expressed his displeasure about Jayantha’s commitment to work. Quite often, Jayantha is absent for work on Friday afternoon, because he needed short leave to go home to Kandy. Almost every weekend, he must go home, while he must leave Colombo early in the Friday afternoon in order to get home before getting dark.
Then, on Monday morning too often he gets late to report to work. Habitually, he has many excuses such as unavoidable family affairs, children’s school related matters, mother’s sickness, and transport issues with train or bus services. Apart from that, public holidays falling in between working days give him an extended weekend of four or five days. If Tuesday is a holiday, then Monday is a non-working day for Jayantha; if Thursday is a holiday, then Friday is also a non-working day for him.
Undoubtedly Sri Lanka is a top-ranked country with the most number of holidays or non-working days a year for more than a half century now. But there has been no attempt for any rectification of the issue.
Transfer requests
Jayantha knows that his weekly travel between Colombo and Kandy is hectic and costly so, he has a hope for a solution – getting a transfer to the University of Peradeniya. Since there is no formal system of transferring employees between the universities, he has been asking his immediate superior, the head of the department, to help him.
One day the professor travelled to the University of Peradeniya in order to attend to an official matter. Knowing that he was travelling to Peradeniya, Jayantha too gently reminded him about the request for the transfer and wanted him check on that matter there. The professor also had the opinion that, it is better for everyone, if Jayantha can get transferred to Peradeniya.
During the time of the day in Peradeniya, the professor remembered Jayantha’s request and asked an official there “if it is possible for his office assistant, Jayantha, to get a transfer to Peradeniya”.
The official first, laughed and then, responded: “If we have to accommodate all such transfer requests that we have received, we should have had about 10 universities here in Peradeniya.”
While few others who were there too started laughing with the official, the professor expressed his surprise: “What do you mean?”
The official clarified what he said: “We have received many applications with transfer requests from all other universities in the country too.”
Still it was not clear to the professor, so the official explained the point further: “You know why? For so many years under many different governments, the Higher Education Ministers have come from Kandy area.”
The professor replied: “Oh…really…? No more explanations are needed! It is clear enough why so many university employees too are from Kandy and having the same problem of asking transfers to Peradeniya.”
‘Win-win opportunity’
Prior to the early 1970s, heads of the government institutions, including the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), had the legitimate responsibility and power to recruit their employees. It was a lucrative business for the politicians to take over this responsibility and powers.
In fact, it must have changed at the commencement of policy reforms. But policy reforms in 1977 did not carry out public sector reforms and did not discharge the responsibility of public sector employment from the hands of the politicians.
Thanks to the liberalisation process, this has created some opportunities for employment generation in the expanding private sector. But nevertheless, private sector expansion continued to remain subdued due to inadequate economic reforms (coupled with political crises), even for the people the government was the major ‘job-provider’ to the nation.
For both sides, it was viewed as a ‘win-win’ opportunity. The politicians could attract the electoral support by promising public sector jobs to their supporters. The people could also go an extra mile beyond exercising their democratic rights of voting, by extending their active support for the politicians’ electoral campaigns in order to secure job opportunities for themselves and their family members.
Disadvantaged private sector
Dr. Goh Keng Swee, the first Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, made an interesting contrast between Sri Lanka and Singapore over the private sector expansion between the two countries. Even as early as during 1977-1980, in his report to the first Executive President of Sri Lanka, J.R. Jayewardene, he pointed out that Sri Lanka’s private investment was only 15 per cent of total investment, compared with 75 per cent of that in Singapore.
Inadequate job openings in the private sector fueled the public hope that the potential job opportunities for people are available with the government through the winning politicians. In fact, almost at every election the contesting political leaders promised public sector jobs to thousands of unemployed.
Apart from that, even if the private sector job opportunities were available, the choice of the public sector over the private sector for employment is a ‘rational choice’ for the people. In the absence of public sector and SOE reforms, public sector jobs were accompanied by the lucrative privileges with better bargaining abilities including trade union powers, comfortable working conditions, access to extensive holidays and non-working days, and ‘life-time’ remuneration packages with pensions.
Even if there is lack of research to confirm this, such a distinctive division between the public and the private sectors must have had far-reaching negative repercussions over private sector expansion in the country. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the private sector was at a disadvantage in recruiting as well as retaining employees against the offer of lucrative job opportunities by the public sector.
Back to square one
Along with the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) implemented in the 1980s and the 1990s, the public sector was intended to be downsized with an offer of voluntary retirement schemes. It is difficult to suggest that the programme was implemented fully or steadily reducing public sector permanently. If it was the case, public sector employment and budgetary spending would not have expanded so sharply thereafter.
For instance, within a 15-year period from 2005-2020, public sector employment increased approximately by one-third from about one million to 1.5 million, in net terms even after adjusting for the retirement numbers. This increase was much greater than the increase in Sri Lanka’s entire labour force during the same period. The economic consequences of this increase were intense and critical too.
The budgetary spending on salaries and wages as well as on pensions rose remarkably. During the past two decades from 2000-2020, the budgetary spending out of its revenue rose from 32 per cent to 58 per cent on salaries and wages, and 10 per cent to 19 per cent on pensions.
The corresponding increase in productive contribution to the economy or to GDP through the public sector expansion remains an issue to be explored. The inadequate private sector expansion in order to raise incomes and generate job opportunities continued to remain subdued. Accordingly, government’s tax revenue from private sector expansion remains subdued compelling the government to borrow in order to finance increasing government spending.
Finally, the end of the road was the economic collapse. In the midst of the current economic crisis, the need for public sector reforms and reducing the public sector employment remains a critical issue, but a difficult choice. The problem gets worse, as the public demands and protests in the midst of the crisis is moving in the opposite directions. However, the bitter lessons from the man-made crisis cannot be avoided.
(The writer is a former Professor of Economics at the University of Colombo and can be reached at sirimal@econ.cmb.ac.lk and follow on Twitter @SirimalAshoka).
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