Shirkers and skivers

Editorial-October 28, 2014,

The Size Of The Cabinet And The Allocation Of Departments To Ministries-Yet we have 50-60 of them.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa boasted, in his budget speech, the other day, that his government had increased the number of public employees to 1.3 million. He said the UNP-led UNF government had once tried to reduce the state service to a mere 300,000 workers. But, the question is whether the country has gained in any way from that huge increase in government servants or the productivity of the public sector has improved. If the state service can manage with 300,000 workers it doesn’t make any sense to hire more than four times that number and place an additional burden on the taxpayers.

The public service is full of malingerers, shirkers, bribe takers and skivers. It is characterised by inefficiency, tardiness, corruption and callous disregard for the ordinary people. Still, the state employees have to face disciplinary action if they get caught bunking off work. But, parliamentarians who are also paid salaries and pensions with public funds get away with skiving. They skip parliamentary sessions even during crucial debates. Worse, their leaders try to justify their habitual absence.

The national budget for 2015 is being debated in Parliament at present. But, MPs’ attendance has been so poor that Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa has expressed his concern about their absenteeism. Most of them do not seem to take their fiduciary responsibilities and legislative duties seriously. Even those MPs who have been on a campaign to restore the supremacy of parliament keep away when issues of crucial national importance are taken up in the House.

A few weeks ago the party leaders, troubled by MPs’ poor attendance, in their wisdom, unanimously decided that parliamentary sessions should go on with or without a quorum during the budget debate and agreed not to call for divisions. Their remedy was far worse than the malady, as we argued in these columns. An inevitable consequence of that decision was that the situation took a turn for the worse with the Speaker having to ring the quorum bell more frequently. Thankfully, sanity prevailed at long last; the party leaders reversed their decision. But, the problem persists.

It was claimed by some party leaders on Monday in justification of the absence of so many MPs that some of them had gone to courts. Only six UNP MPs had been summoned by the Colombo Fort Magistrate for alleged trespass of the SLFP trade union premises in Colombo 02. The public is paying through the nose to maintain 225 parliamentarians. The other 219 MPs or at least a majority of them should have been present in the House. Where were they?

Interestingly, not even a court case can prevent an MP from attending Parliament, Speaker Rajapaksa has ruled. On July 05, 2012, he declared in the House that all parliamentarians had a right to attend Parliament regardless of court cases and summons. He gave this ruling following an order issued by the Chilaw High Court for the arrest of UNP MP Palitha Range Bandara for failure to appear before it. The parliamentarian had informed the court through the Parliamentary Secretary General that he was attending Parliament on that day.

Parliament has made many a vital decision with a handful of MPs present in the chamber and what is the use of having so many lawmakers? Now that all nine Provincial Councils are fully functional with 455 members and 45 ministers, the number of parliamentarians should be reduced drastically.

It has been suggested in some quarters that the MPs’ sitting allowance be increased substantially as an antidote to chronic absenteeism. Such a move, in our book, will be as stupid as ‘hurling a piece of Maldive fish (umbalakada) at a thieving cat in flight’ as a popular local saying goes.