30 January 2019 11:38 am
He said that such officials would be interdicted with immediate effect before initiating disciplinary inquiries.
“If I receive any complaint about any government official, who often used smartphones or surfing Facebook during office time, first I would interdict him/her and after then only conduct a disciplinary inquiry,” the Governor of Central Province Maithri Gunaratne said.
He was addressing an event organised to appoint government servants in the Central Province yesterday. “The government servants were appointed to serve the public and that service should be given in maximum,” he said. "The government servants who work in the Central Province should work under a certain code of conduct. Before 30 years the productivity of the India Government workers had stayed behind us when compared with our country. But now the situation is different and they surpassed us. Indian State policies were implemented through their government servants. Politicians change every five years but no changes were made to the policies," the Governor said.
“However, in Sri Lanka, our policies were used to change according to the politicians,” he said. "If an ordinary person comes to a Divisional Secretariat, that person should have to come at least fifteen times to get his work done, but if he gives a bribe, the same work was being done in a short period of time. “This is how our government servants serve the public.
Even few honest people can be found among those," Governor Maithri Gunaratne said. The salaries of the government servants are from tax monies collected from the public. The Government collects tax from all consumer items. With the help of these taxes, we maintain the government services,” he added. "These days everyone prefers to have jobs in the state service because they can collect their salary even without doing any work. As usual, the government service should be started at 8.30 a.m but after completing all their personal doings only they used to start office work after 9.30 a.m. Even after starting their work, their phones keep ringing and then they hang on their phones and start surfing Facebook except office work,” the Governor said.
“With all their extra works no government servant works at least two hours a day. The persons, who work, works until their death and non-working person whiles his time away,” Governor Gunaratne added. (Chaturanga Samarawickrama)
Video by Chandana