Prof. Sirimal Abeyratne
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.
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