Our legislators spend more time attending events – Time for real work!

I was just thinking of the time our lawmakers waste being just seen at events. Just yesterday, there was the President who had gone on a visit to the Manelwatte Temple, in Bollagala to review the progress of the Buddhist University that is being constructed in an adjoining 50 acre site. Lo and behold there were about 10 ministers and MPs in his entourage!

No doubt they will like the photo op of this for their scrap books and also to get into the Newspapers, but should the public not expect more than that?

Then on the same day, the PM hosted a Deepavali Festival Event at Temple Trees, also attended by MPs and Ministers and a whole load of Ambassadors and a crowd of people who had nothing better to do, an either wangled an invitation or gate crashed this event.

On the same day, a large number of MPs and Ministers came to pay their last respects to the remains of the Ven. Maduluwawe Sobhitha Thera at the Naga Vihare.

I want the  reader to think that in this traffic in Colombo, once these worthies do these duties they have no time for other work, like running the Country, for whey we the public are footing the bill. We cannot say that it is our culture to attend funerals and so most of the Politicians spend inordinate amount of time attending funerals, as otherwise their constituents would find them ungrateful!

I am sure an educated legislator will have to balance their work, so that they do in fact spend as much time on the work they have been asked to carry out, and try and use surrogates like wives to attend funerals. We must also realize that there are MORE funerals to attend now than ever before, and so along with the heavy traffic and these obligations, the affairs of state take second fiddle.

I am also aware that the PM knows this and has tried to rein in some of these excessive time wasting of Ministers. A minster MUST realize that their predecessors worked far harder than they do now. That in an era without mobile phones, fax and photocopy machines and most especially email and social media. SO will all the new techniques to make life easier, they are useless unless they also make life far more productive and I don’t see that happening.

The solution to all this is to restrict Ministries to the technocrats like in the US and MPs remain to serve the people, and pass legislation. That looks like the best mix, so there will be no opportunity to give jobs to the boys, stuffing ministries and with riff raff. We will then improve the PUBLIC SECTOR too.