Public sector lethargy and employee rights

In January 2016, in a rare show of accountability, the General Secretary of the Government and Provincial Council Public Service Trade Union Federation, Ajith. K. Thilakarathne had taken up an issue of time squandered by public sector employees with the then President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe. No trade union leader had dared before to complain against his own members. 
In a letter addressed to both the leaders, Thilakarathne had pointed out that 60 percent of the 1.5 million public servants (both under the central government and provincial councils) were engaged in browsing the Internet, Face Book and other entertainment sites using the office computers and their own smart phones for over two hours of their daily eight-hour duty. 
He had said that these facts had been revealed during a confidential survey that had been conducted in selected government institutions on an idea mooted by his Federation. The wastage of time, based on his statistics, amounts to 40 working hours of each state employee being spent on these hobbies for a month and the total man-hours robbed from the public sector runs into 1.8 million a day. 

Around the same period the then Special Assignments Minister Dr. Sarath Amunugama had stated that a large majority of public servants do not work at least four hours of their eight-hour duty. These revelations were made during a time when the leaders had vowed to ensure “good governance” in the country. 
Readers might recall that six weeks into his Presidency, on December 26, 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa paid an official visit to the office of the Department of Motor Traffic (DMT) which is commonly known as RMV (Registrar of Motor Vehicles) in Werahera, to inspect the efficiency of the institution and he had to criticize the officials in the presence of the public, after observing the appalling situation there. 
Again, five days later, the President, during a discussion with the officials of the Ministry of Public Transport held at the Presidential Secretariat stressed that inefficiency in the State sector which has resulted in displeasure among the public towards every previous government should come to an end during the tenure of the present government.
He even warned that he had instructed the intelligence services and the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) to look into irregularities in the State sector and apprehend those who are responsible. During a meeting at the President’s Secretariat on September 17, 2020 he had to reiterate the point saying that his understanding was that the main problem in the country was that nobody carries out his or her duty properly. However, Rajapaksa who mainly promised to eradicate indiscipline from the public sector proved to have failed to do so as he failed in almost all governance issues. 
In a very recent development,  the Peradeniya University through a survey conducted by a research team of it has found that only 29 percent of telephones in government institutions open to public were responsive while others were either out of order or not responding. According to the findings of the survey telephones in 42 percent of Pradeshiya Sabhas, 43 percent of municipal councils and 44 percent of urban councils did not show any response to the ringing. 

The findings are in fact not new but well known by the public for decades by experience. Lethargy in the public sector is so widespread that it has been a theme for so many yarns, jokes, cartoons teledramas and even songs such as “Kanthoruwa, kanthoruwa mama wedakarana” sung by veteran singer Anton Johns, since independence. 
The issue has been discussed in the media occasionally, but only to be forgotten within hours or just ignored even by the victims of it. It is the political parties rather than the government that have the leverage to solve this problem as almost all employees of the public sector are members of trade unions affiliated to those parties. Nevertheless, those unions and parties are concerned only about the rights and privileges of their members and not about their accountability towards tax payers. But they all wax eloquent on the wellbeing of the masses and “system change.”