ECONOMYNEXT – The workforce of the state-owned utility provider, the Ceylon Electricity Board, will be restructured to reduce future hires, Sri Lanka’s Minister of Power and Energy has said.
“The existing approved carder of 26,000+ will be revised to reduce the number of employees recruited in the future,” Kanchana Wijesekera said on x (twitter).
“A new salary structure, a performance based incentive system & a promotion system will be introduced to the CEB employees in the next few weeks,” the minister said.
Wijesekera met trade unions of the CEB recently and “Discussed the structure of the reforms, timeline for implementing different tasks, appointments to successor companies, human resource management, salary structures, policy and management decisions taken.”
Earlier this month Sri Lanka’s parliament passed a new electricity law which aimed to unbundle the sector.
Analysts have pointed out that restructuring state-owned enterprises is essential for effective restructuring of the country’s debt.
“After 2 years of negotiations, we got a $5.8B schedule from the Paris Club-led OCC. Yet, we absorbed $3B from 2 SOEs (CEB & CPC) which is over 50% of the deal. SOEs are often the root cause of debt & corruption,” Dhananath Fernando of public policy think tank Advocata Institute said on x. (Colombo/Jun28/2024)