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Mismanagement posers

Ambulances rust, books on health for schoolchildren gather dust and loads of compost manure remain unused in the stores complex of the Central Provincial Health Ministry while there is a dire need for these essentials among the general populace. Reports and exposes of this nature have been increasingly common in this country over the years. Our front page lead story yesterday was a case in point.

There is a point and purpose in our highlighting incompetences and inefficiencies of this kind and we hope that the authorities concerned would take drastic measures to put things right in the relevant institutions. A closely related type of expose which is proving to be increasingly common in the local media, is the non-use or severe underutilization of funds and material assistance allocated for public or semi-public sector institutions.

These exposes which are made entirely in the public interest, point to a state of inner paralysis, gross inefficiency and a pervading environment of dysfunction in some state or semi-state sector institutions which essentially perform a public service function. Our Central Provincial Health Ministry is a case in point.

These reports may prove grist to the will of those opposing provincial self-governance or the provincial council scheme which we do not wish to oppose in principle on account of its implications for power-sharing and power devolution. The non-use and underutilization of key resources, such as ambulances and compost manure, at the Central Provincial Health Ministry, while being considered yet another example of the inefficiencies and mismanagement affecting provincial institutions, couldn't be converted into added evidence of the alleged non-viable nature of the system of provincial self-governance. This is mainly because inefficiency, mismanagement and corruption are found to know no bounds in Sri Lanka. They are found to pervade both central and provincial public institutions.

It is essential, therefore, to track down these malaises to their correct roots and to remedy them while taking urgent, short and medium-term measures to wipe out inefficiencies, mismanagement and corruption.

We note with consternation the current deafening silence on the installation and operationalisation of the once much spoken of Independent Commissions. Oh! what has become of them?

An Independent Public Service Commission could go some way in wiping out some of the perennial ills affecting our public sector institutions. It has been lamented ad nauseam that the right man or woman in the right job is an urgent requirement if progress and development are to be realities. Besides, selected personnel should be given the relevant management skills and expertise. Over and above all impeccably honest, straight-talking and duty-conscious public servants are badly needed. Only a body which is empowered to recruit state sector personnel on non-political, objective criteria could ensure this.

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