News
Legal Draftsman’s Department long on bills but short on staff
View(s):By Namini Wijedasa
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 end of last year, the Department’s 2024 annual report presented to Parliament states.
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
discussions creates ambiguities in the drafts prepared by the Department, the annual report warns.
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 at present.
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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