COLOMBO: Sri Lanka Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake received the proposals for Budget 2017 from public sector trade unions, statutory boards and private sector at a meeting held Monday at the Ministry of Finance.
During the meeting, the Minister discussed the proposals which should be included in the forthcoming Budget with the representatives of several public sector trade unions, who participated in the event.
Among the proposals presented to the Minster were: Provide a systematic training for the new recruits to the public service, Revise the retirement age limit, How to impose tax on those who earn huge income but stay away from paying tax as they are excluded in the tax system and streamline the public transport service. Each proposal was analyzed in detail during the meeting.
Discussing the factors that could affect when implementing such proposals, the Minister said implementing those proposals in a manner which would provide maximum service to the public should be considered.
Since a large number of people have been recruited to public sector haphazardly during the previous regime, discussions were held to put such redundancies into productive purposes. Attention was drawn to occasions where some workers are compelled to do overtime due to vacancies.
Representatives from 10 trade unions of National Trade Union Federation such as Public Administration, Health, Teaching, Education, Labor, Transport, Information and Telecommunication and Posts participated in the discussion.
At the conclusion of the discussion, Finance Minister said that he was able to hold a very successful discussion which will help him to make necessary changes while preserving the worker rights. He also said that several similar discussions were held in the past several weeks aiming to present a more people friendly budget for 2017.
