Finance Ministry to crack down on misuse of government vehicles

The Finance Ministry is set to implement a streamlined programme in accordance with the intention of further pruning recurrent expenditure for public sector employees to prevent the abuse of government vehicles.

As an initial step of curtailing transport allowance of public sector officials, measures have been taken to reduce the fuel allowance given to them.

Accordingly the monthly fuel limit of chairmen, managing director, CEO and DG has been reduced to 145 litres from 170 litres.

Chief Operations Officer and Chief Financial Officer will get 135 litres monthly, down from 140 litres previously.

The monthly fuel limit for any other high ranking officer has been reduced to 115 litres from 120 litres earlier.                 

According to a special report, more than 140 high officers in the public service including ministry secretaries and chairmen of corporations were using two or three luxury vehicles for their personnel use, which is not permitted.

The Ministry has received information regarding the use of ministry and institution vehicles from the pool by some of these officials for their duty purposes while handing over their official vehicles for the personnel use of their family members.

The report has brought to the notice of the Finance Ministry on such misuse of government vehicles with eye witness accounts and photographs of state-owned luxury cars parked at school vehicle parks to pick up their children after school.

It has been revealed that the government has to forego a sum of around Rs. 2 billion annually from those misusing of vehicles.

The Government has already announced plans to save over Rs.40 billion from the budgetary allocation of ministries by further pruning recurrent expenditure for public sector employees by way of cutting the additional payments of state employees numbering over 1.5 million.

An annual expenditure for these employees serving in 1251 state entities is around 44 per cent of the public sector revenue, Finance Ministry statistics indicated.

All ministry secretaries and heads of state institutions have been directed to cut overtime and consolidate allowances of employees in institutions coming under their purview.

The government is spending around Rs. 1.2 trillion annually to pay public sector salaries and pensions and the expenditure for overtime and consolidated allowances is over Rs.40 billion. (Bandula)