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Please, Mr. Minister

No less than the government -controlled Daily News on Thursday quoted Media Minister Mangala Samaraweera calling Lake House "a den of corruption.’’ The same front page report went on to report his assurance that "we’’ (presumably the government) will retrench the number of employees in the company "by half within the next three months as a matter of utmost priority." He had alleged that the company was over-staffed and saddled with inefficiency and unproductivity.

Whether this promise like others made before will be kept or not remains to be seen. Those whose memories go as far back to the heady days when Samaraweera replaced Dharmasiri Senanayake as media minister will remember his statement soon after assuming office that Lankapuwath, the so-called national news agency, will be closed down in days. That did not happen. In fact what did happen was that the editor of that agency was given an added hat as editor of Lake House’s flagship Daily News.

If we go further back in time, we should also remember the People’s Alliance’s election manifesto promise of 1994 to free Lake House of government control. Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike’s United Front government of 1970 took over the controlling shares of the Associated Newspapers of Ceylon Ltd. (ANCL) with the promise of broadbasing the ownership of the company founded by D.R. Wijewardene and owned by his heirs till the 1973 takeover. Although the legislation that vested the control of the company in the government explicitly stated broadbasing as the objective, nothing towards it was even attempted.

It must be said in fairness to Samaraweera that soon after he became minister, he publicly said that Lake House would continue in government hands as the government too needed a publishing house to express its point of view. While it is easy enough for politicians to go back on election manifesto promises and even try to justify such action, there is little solace for voters who may have elected governments to power in the naive belief that promises will be kept. Be that as it may, at least one privately owned newspaper had advocated retention of the status quo at ANCL for the self-same reason adduced by the minister.

We are sure that Samaraweera will know that compulsory retrenchment involves a host of legally required steps including labour department approval. It is of course possible that the government, if it is serious about its minister’s professed intention of reducing the Lake House workforce which he said was 2,900 to less than 1,500 within three months, would choose to offer golden handshake terms to trim the fat off the payroll. But such retirement incentives do not come cheap and it must not be forgotten that the cash to achieve so drastic a reduction in the number of employees must come from either the company’s resources or the exchequer. Either way it is the people who must pay because Lake House belongs to the people.

Also, given the difficulty of finding jobs nowadays, and the virtual impossibility of finding employers like Lake House who by the minister’s account give five bonuses a year and a plate of rice and curry for a mere Rs. 2.50, those who are fortunate enough to be employed there will not willingly want to give up their privileged employment however attractive the quit incentives may be. All these are matters that will have to be addressed if Mangala Samaraweera’s stated objectives are to be achieved in the very short timeframe he has set for himself. Perhaps Samaraweera is different, but most politicians will not choose to embark on the kind of surgery he has proposed with an election staring the government in the face.

It will also be useful to examine how drastic overstaffing of the scale mentioned by the minister occurred in the first instance. The people know very well that politicians, and that applies as much to the greens as to the blues, are well versed in the art of finding jobs for the boys (and the girls) at the people’s expense. Political authorities who have controlled the destinies of ANCL at different times must take much of the blame for the sorry situation that has developed over the years. Private owners running a business, unless they are rank bad managers will not, to use the minister’s own words, create an institution that "is overstaffed and saddled with inefficiency and unproductivity.’’ That will cost them profits that go out off their own pockets and not out of the national exchequer about which most politicians cannot care less.

Then there is the matter about those who control the affairs of this "den of corruption.’’ The board of directors that controlled ANCL since 1994 are the hand-picked nominees of the government. While the present chairman has been in office for over two years, his predecessors fell like ninepins. So much so that he has on the anniversaries of his appointment chosen to tell the readers of his newspapers that he is still in office. While 50 percent of the employees are slated for the chop, will the directors too be brought to account? The minister had not expressed his thoughts on that subject. As far as the public is concerned, one thing that they can bet their last rupee on is that the politicians who have contributed to the sorry mess will go absolutely unscathed. That, after all, is the way of the world we live in.

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