The Finance Ministry has taken decisions to close 34 state institutions, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said on Friday, describing the step as part of an effort to cut what he called an exceptionally high cost of delivering public services.
The President was speaking at the annual general meeting of the Government Surveyors’ Association in Battaramulla, the Daily Mirror reported. He said the government had decided both to shut certain institutions and to merge several others, and that a special committee had been appointed to study the process and carry it out.
What the President actually said
Hiru News carried his remarks verbatim in Sinhala, and they contain two points the English summary leaves out.
The first is a commitment attached to the closures: “If one is closed, an allowance is given.” He did not say in the quoted passage who receives it, on what terms, or how it is funded — the sentence is brief and the beneficiary is not named, though the surrounding remarks are about staff.
The second is an admission of difficulty. “Closing them is also that difficult,” he said, “because these are hugely entangled.”
His stated reasoning was that conditions have changed since many of the bodies were set up. In sectors where the state was once the only provider, he said, a substantial private sector now exists, raising the question of whether government should continue to deliver those services directly or buy them in more cheaply.
He closed on recruitment rather than closure, asking how professionals are to be brought into the public service and how the service is to be made attractive to them. “Otherwise I think our public service will face a major crisis,” he said.
Not reported
Neither filing names a single one of the 34 institutions, gives a timetable, says how many posts are affected, or identifies who sits on the committee. Neither states whether the 34 are closures only or include the mergers mentioned alongside them.
The two accounts agree on the figure, the ministry and the committee. The Daily Mirror’s version is a paraphrase and the Hiru version is a transcript, so this is one speech reported twice rather than two independent confirmations of the underlying decision.