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Civil Aviation Authority advertises 15 vacancies ahead of ICAO audit
View(s):By Namini Wijedasa
The Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka (CAASL) has advertised 15 critical vacancies, including air safety and oversight personnel, ahead of a crucial audit by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) scheduled to take place in the next 24 months.
Among the posts that the CAASL expects to fill are senior civil aviation inspector (aircraft flight operations); senior civil aviation inspector (air traffic management-technical); senior civil aviation inspector (air traffic management-operations); and civil aviation inspector (air traffic management-technical).
Also vacant are the posts of deputy director general (flight safety regulation); director (aircraft operations); and director (aviation security), and director (quality and internal audit).
The CAASL’s 2024 annual report states that it has made concerted efforts to fill critical vacancies with 18 new appointments made last year, “despite constraints arising from national-level recruitment policies”. This brought staff strength to 169 employees as of the end of 2024.
“However, due to the limitations imposed by prevailing government recruitment regulations, 39 positions remained vacant at the end of the reporting period,” the report says. “This staffing gap highlights the need for ongoing dialogue with relevant authorities to facilitate timely appointments in critical areas.”
ICAO is a specialised UN agency that sets the global rules, standards, and frameworks for civil aviation safety, security, efficiency, and environmental protection. Its audits are formal, systematic evaluations to check how well a country is complying with international aviation safety and security standards. Staffing adequacy is a core element of the oversight system, so significant vacancies can lead to audit findings or reduced effective implementation.
Accordingly, ICAO requires “the establishment of a Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) … supported by the appropriate and adequate technical and non-technical staff and provided with adequate financial resources”.
“To effectively fulfil its responsibilities, a State civil aviation system needs to be properly organized and staffed with qualified personnel capable of accomplishing the required wide range of technical duties involved in safety oversight,” its detailed guidance states.
However, ICAO does not explicitly count “vacant positions” as a standalone audit metric; rather, it evaluates whether the state has adequate and capable staff to perform oversight.
Sri Lanka’s last ICAO safety audit was carried out in June 2018 and yielded an effective implementation score of 88.44 percent. Among the lowest performing “critical elements” was “qualified technical personnel”, which was scored at 85.92 percent.
| Legal Draftsman’s Department long on bills but short on staff A high volume of work arising from continuous policy changes within instructing agencies presents a significant challenge to the Legal Draftsman’s (LD) Department, with one-third of its approved cadre also going unfilled by The office has difficulty retaining staff due to low remuneration and struggles with a lack of clear priority setting for legislation from the Cabinet of Ministers. “Requests that have been attended to and completed by this Department and sent out as a final draft are re-sent with fresh instructions for further amendments mainly due to the instructing agencies keep changing the policy [sic],” the report states. “However, when such a request is received, irrespective of it being earlier finalized, this Department has to attend to it, dedicating the same time and attention given to a fresh request,” it adds. “Moreover, requests for such amendments to completed drafts are sent even after the final draft is sent out in all the three languages and sometimes the procedure is repeated a number of times.” For example, the National Building Research Institute Bill was sent out a total of 24 times; the Animal Welfare Bill, 21 times; and the Anti-Terrorism Bill, nine times. “Therefore, even if a request has been attended to and completed by this Department, it could still be reflected in ‘requests that has [sic] not been completed’,” the report points out. The report identifies the lack of clear priority setting by the government as a significant challenge for the Department. Under the Establishment Code, Cabinet must determine the Government’s programme of legislation and the order of priority in which bills are introduced. The Cabinet Secretary is required to communicate the Cabinet’s conclusions—including the order of priority—to each Secretary and to the Legal Draftsman. But the order of priority is habitually not communicated, “making it a challenge to the Department to identify the order of priority of the legislation in the Government’s programme of legislation without any guidance from the Cabinet of Ministers”. The Establishment Code states too that a request for a draft legislation should in all cases be accompanied by a memorandum containing “the fullest possible instructions for the guidance of the legal Draftsman in the preparation of the draft”. During the past years, however, a practice “has been gradually developed” to provide verbal instructions to the Legal Draftsman at various meetings for drafting legislation and amending legislation. While such a practice is usually followed in cases where legislation is exceptionally urgent, “making it a common practice” has become a challenge to the Department. Following verbal instructions for drafting legislation makes it difficult to maintain official records in the Department, while not receiving clear and final instructions during Meanwhile, 62 slots out of the Department’s approved staff cadre of 154 were vacant at the end of 2024. Three Deputy Legal Draftsperson positions are unfilled There are also 12 Assistant Legal Draftsperson vacancies (steps are being taken to fill these as 14 Assistant Legal Draftspersons have completed the required 10 years of service). Separately, there are seven unoccupied Assistant Legal Draftsperson positions for which the competitive exam was held as far back as November 2023, although interviews hadn’t been conducted even by the end of last year. The Assistant Director position is also empty. There has been no Chief Translator since 2023, the Librarian post is empty since 2020 and the Information and Communication Technology Assistant’s slot has remained unfilled since the position was created in April 2020. “The Department has observed that the challenge of maintaining progress is compounded because the procedures to fill vacancies are time-consuming,” the annual report holds. “Furthermore, retaining new recruits is difficult because the remuneration paid is not at a satisfactory level compared to the workload and gravity of the work.” | |
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