Wednesday, November 11, 2015

SLAS – Top Civil Servants – Brainy Geeks with NO COMMON SENSE


The Class 1 & 2 Grade Civil Servants, who are the Administrators of the Government Ministries are extremely well qualified individuals, with Doctorates, Multiple Masters Degrees and Degrees and even a raft of Diplomas, some with all of the above. Maximum salary of their pay grade is less than US$800 per month! 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!

I don’t think there is any class of person who is more qualified in terms of certificates as the Sri Lankan Administrative Service Top Brass, in any country in the world.

First question! Does one need to have all these qualifications to get to this senior level? If so is that how it should be?

Second question! If they spend so much time getting these qualifications, do they do it during their working hours, as they are grossly under employed and have time on their hands to pursue diplomas, degrees and doctorates at the expense of the public service?

Third question! Is there any performance indicator, other than their qualifications to test if they have actually done anything of value in their jobs?

Fourth question! As Ministry Secretaries are chosen from this Elite Pool, of Civil Servants, is there any proper evaluation to see if they are competent to perform the job they have been given, or is it automatically assumed that all the formats in all Ministries are the same, and so they can do any job, as has been the case when one looks at the number of different Ministries these people have worked in during their public service.

Answer to the first question is they DON’T need any of these qualifications. Answer to the second question is that they spend public time and money on getting further educated! Answer to the third and fourth question is that there is NO evaluation of the competence as the Public Service Commission that should get involved in impartial promotions, is NOT competent enough to evaluate their performance and so they get perfunctory recommendations from people who are partial to them, who do not independently evaluate competence.

In short we have “POTH GULLAS” without an ounce of common sense, running our Ministries, and so are UNABLE to reform the PUBLIC SERVICE from within, to make it more efficient. As a result of a poor education system that has only encouraged people with qualifications to enter the Public Service, we end up without CEO quality managers to run the State of Affairs of State!


No wonder then that we have uneducated MPs and Ministers, and overqualified Public Servants, and no one with an ounce of imagination capable of making productive decisions to make our Public Service efficient to serve the PEOPLE!        

3 comments:

  1. None of this matters more than experience in the Private Sector to see how they operate, to make money, being focused on profit, and how to maximize profit in the long term.

    Without that in mind, efficiency and productivity in the Public Sector in the organization they run, cannot be evaluated. They are therefore unable to ascertain if they are serving the public effectively.

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  2. You have 100+ gon bases in the Elite Panel to manage 1.6M Govt. Servants! How can they? unless you increase their salaries to at least Rs300,000 a month and don't give them a vehicle permit, in fact don't give anyone permits as it distorts the economic goals especially.

    But first you must select them using different criteria, namley aptitude tests as being competent to run large public institutions.

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  3. Ironically this post had the highest number of hits in only a couple of hours of posting this morning, and as I was working all day only checked on it now at 6pm

    Why is that? Civil servants at that grade have nothing better to do than surf the net in their Govt. offices paid by the tax payer! Shame < Even I wish I had such luck after working so hard for so long, I don't have any respite.

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