The Western Provincial Road Development Authority (RDA) has exceeded the approved staff limit of the Authority, the Committee on Public Accounts (COPA) has disclosed.
In a statement, the Parliament of Sri Lanka stated that COPA disclosed there are 556 employees working on a daily wage basis and under contract basis as of December 31st, 2021, which is beyond the approved staff limit.
Accordingly, it was disclosed that there are 396 employees on a daily wage basis and 160 employees on a contract basis.
This was disclosed when the COPA committee chaired by MP (Prof.) Charitha Herath met on Monday (05) to examine the Auditor General’s reports and the current performance of the Western Provincial RDA for the years 2018, 2019, and 2020.
The officials present at the meeting pointed out that these employees are essential employees and that several attempts were made to recruit these employees on a permanent basis and it could not be done due to several factors including changes in policies due to the change of government. These employees were recruited on the basis of projects and were paid from the profits of those projects.
(Prof.) Charitha Herath and the members present said that although there were a large number of projects in the past period, road development projects have been reduced due to several factors including the current dollar crisis.
Therefore, if all these employees are hired on a permanent basis, they will have to pay their salaries from the treasury money.
Therefore, the MPs pointed out that it is necessary to look into the confirmation of only the employees required and if there is an excess of labour, they should be compensated for and considered for removal.
MP (Prof.) Charitha Herath recommended that a report be given to COPA within 3 months setting out the priority list of the number of employees according to requirements as there are only a few projects at the moment.
