New recruitments will increase public sector wage bill

Recruitment of 50,000 graduates and 100,000 unskilled youths of low income families for government jobs will increase the public sector salary and pension bill to Rs. 1055 billion from Rs. 735 billion, provisional financial estimates reveal.

The government will be making use of these human resources for productive purposes providing them with vocational training as a preliminary step of public sector modernisation initiative.

Recognising the need for Sri Lanka to enhance the effectiveness of the governance systems to keep pace with challenges in the country, the government is to embark on a public sector modernisation initiative, State Minister of International Cooperation, Skills Development, Employment and Labour Re l ations Susil Premajayantha said.

He noted that this initiative will greatly help reduce implementation gaps and make the public sector more efficient for the people of this country.

Government officials will be empowered to provide solutions with human-centred approaches, he told the Business Times adding that strengthening and increasing productivity of the public sector are essential for economic and social progress.

In this backdrop, the government has launched a public sector expansion programme with the recruitment of 50,000 graduates for school teacher posts and other government jobs.

In addition 100,000 unskilled workers will be given public sector jobs providing them with vocational training and mostly will come from Samurdhi beneficiary families.

According to a former D i re c t o r o f Samurd h i A u t h o r i t y, S . A . P. Suriyapperuma, giving jobs to those from Samurdhi families would improve their status and allow the Samurdhi Authority to remove those families from the beneficiary lists.

The Treasury will have to bear the cost of the salary bill of these unskilled workers amounting to Rs.297.7 billion.

Currently, there are 3.5 million people in Sri Lanka receiving Samurdhi payments of between Rs. 1,500 and Rs. 3, 500 per month and the annual expenditure is in the region of Rs 210 billion.

Preliminary work has already commenced to recruit 50,000 unemployed university graduates from March 1. They will undergo six months of special training before being appointed.

The government is planning to recruit most of the graduates as school teachers to fill vacancies to teach subjects like mathematics, science and English language.

The remaining batch of graduates would be attached to several departments including Irrigation, Agriculture Development, Wildlife Conservation, Ayurveda, Health and Indigenous Medicine Services, Survey, Animal Products, Valuation and Immigration and Emigration.