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Depositors pay Pramuka salaries By Quintus
Perera Both Central
Bank officials and Pramuka employees confirmed salaries were being
paid. "Salaries are being paid to all employees," a senior
Central Bank official said, adding that the payments were being
made from Pramuka funds. A.H.A. Mendis, managing director of the
bank who is a paid employee, said he had received his salary. "All
employees have been paid. The monthly salary bill is Rs. 1.5 million,"
he said though other employees noted that the salary bill totals
Rs. 2 million while a further Rs. 1.3 million is being paid as rent
for the building and there are other expenses like power and water
rates that are being paid. The issue is
likely to raise a fresh controversy - particularly amongst depositors
- as depositors' monies are being used for these payments which
could stretch for months during the duration of the case. The Central
Bank official said the salaries have to be paid as the liquidation
process has been stalled by legal action and thus the Pramuka bank
continues to function under Central Bank supervision. Mendis said
only he - as a working director - was receiving the salary. Rohan
Perera, former chairman of the bank who has been absconding since
the bank crashed late last year, though he has denied from an unknown
location abroad that he is in hiding, is also entitled to a salary
as CEO but has not drawn his wages, Mendis said. Other directors
were either non-working directors, including new chairman Udaya
Nanayakkara, or they have resigned. Sunimal Dabrera,
President, Pramuka Bank Employees' Union said since they are receiving
their salaries the union has slowed its protests on the issue. "The
moment we are affected, we would also sue the Central Bank and others
responsible," he said. Palitha Gamage,
Joint Secretary, Pramuka Depositors' Association which has gone
to court to revoke the liquidation move, said paying the salaries
of the employees certainly eats into their deposit money and this
situation would worsen if the case continued for months. The court
case resumed on February 21. Depositors are also disappointed that the Central Bank doesn't appear to show any interest in helping the Janashakthi group restart the bank, asking for more and more details from the bailout firm (Janashakthi) which has requested permission to examine Pramuka records before making a formal proposal to take over Pramuka. A Janashakthi spokesman told The Sunday Times FT that it has the support of more than 50 percent of the bank shareholders and is confident of saving the bank. The company has told the Central Bank it need not allocate any funds for the restructure programme. Govt. firms come under scrutiny By Dinesha
Matthias Till now the
department was limited to auditing government institutions. The
new powers would mean the department would be able to audit companies
like the national carrier, SriLankan Airlines, which had hitherto
resisted such scrutiny despite being owned by the government. SriLankan Airlines
officials had even refused to appear before Parliament committees
overseeing such institutions. The World Bank has recommended that
the Auditor General's Department be restructured and given more
powers. At a time when
the government is calling for a greater degree of accountability
and financial transparency from all categories of public sector
institutions, the Auditor General, as the watchdog agency, is to
be restructured under a new Audit Act to ensure better effectiveness
and control of public expenditure, Mayadunne said in an interview. The enhanced
powers include the authority to check the effectiveness of how government
money is spent under new authorization to carry out performance
and effectiveness audits, he said. The new Act
also provides for audit reports to be made available to the media
and a Website set up so that the public has access to audit reports. The salary
of the Auditor General is to be brought into line with that of a
Supreme Court judge. Audit reports
produced since 1985 have so far received inadequate attention from
parliament. Now agriculture tender draws flak An Agriculture
Ministry tender calling for applications for the storage of paddy
has run into allegations that a decision may have been already made
to award the tender even before the tender closed. What has also
raised suspicions, according to a Sunday Times FT probe, is that
ministry officials were either reluctant to talk about the issue
or passed our inquiry to Agriculture Secretary Dixon Nilaweera,
who was unavailable either at office or home. He is "busy",
"not available" or "off for a meeting" was the
response the paper got from his personal secretary over the past
two weeks. In recent weeks,
the business community has been complaining about the lack of transparency
in government tenders. The tender
notice published by the ministry on January 4 called for the supply
of hermetic storage systems for the storage of paddy. The purpose of an open tender is to invite offers and is meant to ensure fairness to all bidders. A senior official of the ministry, who declined to be identified, said the tender was still being evaluated. But articles published in some newspapers prior to the closing date of the tender (February 5) said the government was planning to import mobile Israeli containers to store paddy implying that a decision may have been made on the source of supply. Business sources also said the specifications listed in the tender fitted the type of hermetic storage systems manufactured only by one Israeli American conglomerate, triggering speculation that the tender specifications had been tailor made to suit that particular company. Lanka under IMF, World Bank spell As the government
speeds up investor-friendly labour laws, Sri Lanka's trade union
movement says the country is sinking under the spell of the IMF
and World Bank and threatens to pull out of an apex labour advisory
group. Trade union representatives say they would be forced to withdraw from the National Labour Advisory Council (NLAC), a vital, representative group that looks at labour issues, accusing the government of sneaking legislation into parliament at the behest of the two Washington agencies, without even consulting the council. The NLAC is chaired by the government and has representatives from employers, employees and trade unions and acts as a consultative body on labour matters. The unions have boycotted NLAC meetings since last August after the government pushed through legislation aimed at dismantling archaic laws. The unions were livid last month when the government attempted to ram through amendments to the Termination of Employment Act and the Industrial Disputes Act, both of which turned out to benefit employers more than workers. Now they are seriously considering a complete withdrawal from the council, set up in the late 1980s. "We just can't allow this to happen. The government is not discussing with labour unions or civil society these amendments which are detrimental to the workers on top of other issues," said M. Shah, general secretary of the powerful Ceylon Bank Employees' Union. Unionists and human rights workers also fear that the World Bank/IMF-proposed Poverty Reduction Strategy Policy (PRSP), seen being implemented by the government after a major donor conference in Tokyo in May, would further erode worker rights by throwing out farmers from small, uneconomic plots to be handed over to multinationals under flexible labour laws. "We are
in serious trouble if the PRSP is implemented. Civil society was
not consulted on this document. These are World Bank and IMF policies
which have failed elsewhere. They are not only taking away the rights
of workers but the rights of everyone," argued Sarath Fernando,
coordinator of the Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform
(MONLAR). The government
has been trying to get rid of old labour laws and rules that deter
foreign investment. The task is not easy with trade unions mounting
protests, making use of rising costs of living to garner support
from all quarters. The high cost of living, triggered by fuel costs
which are rising every month, has complicated matters for the government
which is trying to provide some relief through a wage hike by mid-year.
The planned part-sale of the debt ridden People's Bank has been
stalled by opposition and trade union protests forcing the government
to move out the bank's CEO, a foreign expatriate who was handling
the re-structuring, to another department, to calm the opposition
protests. "We don't
want the money that is being pledged at the Tokyo donor meeting
as it will come with strings attached and our debt situation would
worsen. We also don't like the route to the Tokyo meeting the government
has taken without consulting civil society on what is best for this
country," stressed MONLAR's Fernando. The international
labour movement is also throwing its weight behind local protests
over violation of trade union rights and freedom of association,
warning that IMF and World Bank policies have ruined many a country
and only led to deprivation; not prosperity. “We think
the implementation of the PRSP will reduce Sri Lanka to poverty;
not reduce poverty in Sri Lanka,” noted Earl Brown, a legal
counsel covering Asia for the American Federation of Labour-Congress
of Industrial Organisations Solidarity Centre (AFL-CIO). Brown, member of an international mission to study current labour reforms and its impact on workers and their rights, told The Sunday Times FT that the demand for labour flexibility in Sri Lanka had little support from the majority in the country and there was no evidence to show that labour reforms spurs economic development. In fact, according to Debiyana Kar, a research associate at the Washington-based Centre for Economic Policy Research who was also on the mission team, labour productivity in Sri Lanka has increased in the past five to 10 years and was on par with US productivity levels whereas real wages here have declined. She said the PRSP is also being tried in sub-saharan Africa while its pension reforms introduced in Argentina in 1994 triggered the crisis there. Brown praised the peace process but cautioned against finding economic solutions that don’t meet the aspirations of the people. “Sri Lanka should take its time, pick a solution that is suited for this country instead of being pushed around by a bunch of international bankers.” Aitken Spence
chairman Prema Cooray was rumoured to have stepped down from his
position or retired as head of the conglomerate last Friday with
tycoon Harry Jayawardena expected to succeed him. Neither Cooray
nor Jayawardena were available for comment but a director of the
firm denied Cooray had resigned, saying it was only a rumour. Cooray, who
became chairman only about a year ago with the retirement of the
previous chairman Ratna Sivaratnam, is regarded as being mainly
responsible for the conglomerate's expansion of tourism in the Maldive
islands. He was appointed
to the Board of Aitken Spence and Co Ltd in April 1998. D.H.S. Jayawardena
came on the board of Aitken Spence in April 2000 following the acquisition
of a sizeable stake in the company and has long been rumoured to
be planning to take over the conglomerate. He is the founder director and current managing director of the Stassen Group of companies, a diversified group in the export and import trade, and is also the managing director of Distilleries Company. Aitken Spence released its annual results last week.
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