Thursday, June 30, 2016

Hiring 8,000 Graduates to gather data for the new Right To Information Act is a typical exercise in futility


Today’s Lankadeepa reported that 8,000 graduates called INFORMATION PUBLICITY OFFICERS will shortly be hired by a new Gazette Notification, to gather data on 4,000 Government Institutions in Sri Lanka, in keeping with the Right to Information Bill which passed last week, and is now an ACT of Parliament. Based on a monthly salary of Rs40K, with will cost an additional Rs4B per annum to the Govt. servants wage bill.

Until a commission is appointed to work out how this information is gathered and disseminated to the public on their right to information I don’t believe it is the time to recruit before there is a clear cut system in place to provide the requested information.

There is a learning curve, first on what information that can be divulged, without affecting the privacy rights to that information, in the personal and national interest. Then there is the actual information that is requested, and finally how this information is given out. The powers have forgotten that MPs can ask for certain information that is similar to what the public now may ask, and there are already procedures in place to supply that information to them. These procedures MUST be fine tuned further to ensure efficiency, where the same information is not provided by different parties, one not knowing that the other is ALSO providing the same information.


Knowing the way, 100 ministries operate, with one not knowing what their areas of responsibilities are, I don’t have any faith in the present system that duplication, and waste will be the order of the day, unless, a proper system is operational, to provide a logical approach and responsibility for the information that provided that will prevent duplication, and will have clear areas of responsibility of bodies to supply this information.

The mental deviants who run this Country are unable to rationalize, and so put the cart before the horse, saying we have to appoint 8,000 more people in a Country with a huge shortage of workers in the Private Sector and a hugely bloated Public Sector, to add to the latter at the price of the former!!!


In my opinion, NOT ONE PERSON should be hired. The information can be provided by the overstaffed departments of Govt. if they actually decide to do some work for a change and they already know what data they have with them!

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