Gota loyalists deceive defence secretary!

 

Monday, 20 July 2015

The state administration, local government and democratic governance ministry on June 26 issued a circular for a salary increase for executive grade public servants. Although this circular is applicable to all executive grade public servants, the defence ministry’s additional secretary S. Hettiarachchi is cunningly planning to prevent approval of this increase for armed forces officers, say ministry sources.

 

This Hettiarachchi is a henchman of former defence secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa. Three other additional secretaries serve under him – Jeevanthi Senanayake for the Army, Lakshika Senaratne for the Air Force and Chaturika Ranaweera for the Navy. These three too, were appointed by Gotabhaya. Of them, Jeevanthi has been able to ensnare defence secretary B.M.U.D. Basnayake for a reason best known to them. The defence secretary has become so babyish that he accepts any report being submitted by her, say the sources.

 

Although this salary increase has been added to this month’s salary as per the budget proposals of the ‘Yaha Paalana’ government, the three female secretaries have recommended that the armed forces officers in the executive grade do not belong to the same level of executive grade public servants, which opinion Hettiarachchi has given to the defence secretary, and he has withheld paying it. This clearly is a conspiracy to make the ‘Yaha Paalana’ government unpopular among armed forces members. Despite explanations, Basnayake is refusing to reject Jeevanthi’s report.

 

Therefore, armed forces officers are expecting that prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and president Maithripala Sirisena would mediate in this matter.