Finance Ministry bans recruitment of minor staff, no jobs for supporters

The Finance Ministry has banned all ministers from recruiting minor staff for their ministries and departments under them – a practice which has helped them to provide jobs for their supporters.

The categories include labour, minor staff, office assistants and watchers. It has been found that the recruitment has not been controlled or in keeping with real needs.

The Ministry of Finance has told all ministers; cabinet and state that henceforth such recruitment should be on Treasury advice. A senior Treasury official said the necessary instructions have gone out to Ministry Secretaries and heads of Departments and state institutions. They will have to send their requirements to the Treasury.

The official said the objective was reduce over staffing and reducing the expenditure on staff in state institutions.

He said the Treasury would also have a monitoring scheme to ensure that no persons were recruited out of the proposed scheme.

“This will ensure that there is equality in distribution of jobs instead of the jobs in some of the ministries being divided among one electorate or a district,” he said.

The directive came after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa himself submitted a Cabinet paper this week to set up a ‘Multipurpose Development Task Force’ from which the government hopes to fill vacancies in government establishments after providing selected persons with suitable training in a range of fields.

According to the Cabinet paper some 130,000 persons will be enlisted for training under the Task Force and confirmed in service in a six month period. They will be selected from groups which have studied only up to grade eight or up to G.C.E. (O/L).

The Multipurpose Development Task Force will be established as a separate Government Department from January 15, 2020.

Those trained will also be deployed for maintenance and civil work, assisting schools, hospitals as caretaker workers, safeguarding villages from wildlife threats and acting as a supplementary civil force assisting security forces and police services.

(Source: The Sunday Times – By Damith Wickremasekara)