Integrity of Public Service

Speech delivered
by Dr. Sarath Gamini
De Silva

as the Chief Guest at the award ceremony of the “Integrity Icon 2021, Transparency International Sri Lanka”, at the BMICH on 11 January, 2022.

I have known about the Transparency International Sri Lanka as the watchdog for ensuring transparency, accountability, integrity, dignity and honesty of the public service. I have heard them resorting to seeking legal remedies when these qualities have been found to be wanting in various matters of public importance. The current sorry state of the nation on the verge of bankruptcy is due in large part to the lack of these essential qualities, resulting in corruption among the rulers and the public officials. To quote from their policy document, Integrity Icon programme, going on since 2018, is supposed to name and fame honest public officials while inspiring a new generation to build a more effective public service with transparency in all their dealings.

I salute you for your efforts to recognise public servants who have been showing great resilience in the course of their duties with integrity, dignity and a great sense of humanity amidst many obstacles. These qualities are especially important at a time when mankind is facing the biggest challenge of our lifetime with the COVID pandemic ravaging every country in the world. One cannot think of any other calamity, natural or man-made, that affected every individual nation in the world with long term repercussions on the very survival of some. No other emergency has demanded honest, selfless efforts of the public service to this extent. I note with appreciation your timely focus on the pandemic this year.

Despite the growing participation of the private sector, in many spheres, in the past several decades, it is the public sector that serves the vital function of providing the basic needs for the vast majority of the population. Ranging from provision of daily requirements of basic living, education, healthcare and transport services, one cannot think of any service solely provided by the private sector.

With an overburdened public service, which the authorities now claim is too heavy to be maintained economically, due to their own fault of poor planning, the public servants are often a neglected and distressed lot, with no one to care for them, apart from a few active trade unions. When they are underpaid, with salaries not in keeping with the ever-rising cost of living, denied progress with promotions, and having to cope with many personal and domestic issues, they are necessarily a frustrated lot. To aggravate matters, unscrupulous politicians, with no transparency in their policies or actions, have been interfering with every aspect of their service, with political patronage being the main criterion for promotions, transfers and the like. Under such circumstances, it may be considered unreasonable to expect an honest service from such an aggrieved group, when honesty, efficiency or integrity are not recognised or rewarded by the authorities.

The governments concentrates on building highways, used mainly by the affluent, with private vehicles for quick transit often for pleasure activities, it is sad to note that due to the very nature of such highway systems, the common man’s modes of transport ,like the three wheelers, and motor cycles, are denied access. Urban transport for the public servants to get to their places of work remains rudimentary. Overcrowded buses and trains with people precariously hanging on to footboards is a common sight still as it was several decades ago. During rush hours in the morning and evening, people waste much time on the roads awaiting buses or trains that do not ply on time, to get to their places of work and to return home in the evening.

While much is spent on laying walking paths in the urban areas, it is depressing to see daily on television screens, how villagers walk miles on footpaths to fetch clean water for daily consumption, to take their sick to the hospital short of essential supplies, and how the children cross risky make-shift bridges to get to a school with not even the basic facilities for a decent education.

These are areas not served by the private sector. The teachers, postal workers, public health inspectors, public health midwives and other healthcare workers and the Grama Niladharis are undergoing all the hardship in serving these people, generally neglected by others. Whenever these villagers are interviewed, they never complain about the services provided while lamenting on the poor quality of the infrastructure. They blame the local politicians who are seen only during the election campaigns, and regularly fail to attend to their needs once in power, leaving the villagers at the mercy of the public servants.

The private sector, naturally interested in profit-making mainly, has been uninterested in providing relief to see that these basic services are provided to the masses. While some large organisations have been doing some service as a part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR), these are few and far between. The government has not focused on harnessing the private sector to any significant extent in organising such activity. Large private sector business groups are diversified into many different areas including healthcare. However, they treat healthcare services also as yet another business activity with no consideration for the humanitarian aspect involved. Every opportunity is made use of to make a profit, exploiting misery.

It should be noted that healthcare is perhaps the only industry where the salesman (hospital or the doctor) decides what the customer (patient) should buy. Thus, there is a heavy moral responsibility on those involved, from doctors to other service providers, to see that those who seek their services are not exploited. The companies do not seem to be worried about or ashamed in declaring huge profits annually and please the shareholders with fat returns. Well we cannot change human nature.

I know a friend of mine who has invested in a hospital chain. He gets substantial discounts on the services provided by the company for himself and his family. Every year he gets a hefty dividend from his investment. Feeling guilty about how that money was made perhaps unethically he spends the proceeds only for meritorious activity.

How the public servants rose to the occasion in the face of unprecedented challenges due to the COVID pandemic shows the innate goodness of man. Their integrity, honesty guided by strong moral principles by many, especially in the state health services, is worthy of admiration.

COVID is a disease hitherto unknown to mankind and continues to plague the whole world. Although the fact that it spreads by inhaling the virus was evident from the very outset, the ways of its prevention apart from hygienic measures, wearing masks and physical distancing was not known. As it took about a year to produce an effective vaccine and make it available to all, those who cared for the sick in the hospitals and the community took much risk in exposing themselves to the infection. Protective personal equipment (PPE) was in short supply at the beginning.

As hospitals were getting overcrowded, the doctors, nurses and all categories of health staff at times did 24-hour continuous shifts. Hardly any deaths occurred due to lack of commitment of the staff. Inadequate ICU facilities were quickly corrected often by the staff themselves with the hospital directors and other administrative staff playing a leading role with the help of the health department as well as personally garnering the support of voluntary organisations, private sector and individuals. The public health service, including the Public Health Inspectors (PHI) did a yeoman service in attending to the needs of the people at home, often using a bicycle or a motorbike as the only form of transport to reach them. The ambulance services kept running though there was a high risk of the staff getting the infection from the patients within the confines of a small space inside the vehicle. All this was done with lack of basic facilities, like personal transport or extra remuneration. While the authorities were preaching to avoid congestion, keeping a safe physical distance, the healthcare workers were provided only with overcrowded public transport with no precautions to travel to their place of work.

When caring for COVID patients with only mild illness at their own homes was introduced, the Sri Lanka Medical Association, SLMA, rose to the occasion providing free advisory service on line called the SLMA 247 service. Hundreds of volunteer doctors from all sectors working round the clock answered nearly a 65,000 such calls over a five month period, amounting to nearly 450 calls per day. The numbers thus served was much more as each call often represented several affected individuals in the same household. General medical advice, simple drug prescriptions and words of reassurance were given. This was the only medical consultation service available to those large numbers quarantined at home. The Suvaseriya ambulance service cooperated with the SLMA to provide a quick and easy way of transferring patients identified as needing further care in a hospital.

The teachers continued to serve the children locked up at home online. They did so at their own expense getting necessary computers and other equipment and buying data. There was no provision of these or planning for such by the government. This unfortunately could serve only a limited number of students due to lack of resources. It is saddening to note that even now the authorities do not seem to be planning a way of providing the infrastructure to meet any future challenges of this nature.

The role played by the armed forces and the police, in various aspects of pandemic control should be appreciated by all.

I detailed all this to illustrate how an unprecedented health crisis, with wide ranging implications, could be managed satisfactorily with a dedicated public service rising up to the occasion, at great odds. Such was the dedication, integrity and the commitment of our public servants that Sri Lanka is credited as one of the few countries that has controlled the pandemic successfully despite its lack of resources due to the poor economic situation.

Their sense of service with no chance of personal gain is all the more creditable and noteworthy when one sees how so many individuals and groups were exploiting the misery of the people to make a personal fortune in quick time. Both here and abroad news reports have shown how people became millionaires and millionaires became billionaires since the beginning of the pandemic. How some vaccine manufacturers have made profit-making their primary objective is disgraceful.

Locally, many companies were seen to be openly profiting allegedly with the blessings of the authorities. Without resorting to usual time-consuming tender procedures, in view of the urgency of the situation, selected groups were allowed to import supplies of material. Personal protection equipment (PPE), PCR test kits, and the like thus imported were made available at exorbitant prices, probably keeping a big margin of profit. There are many allegations to say that companies and even those affiliated to the administration profited tremendously from lifesaving vaccine imports as well. How even the expatriates returning from the Middle East were compelled to pay heavily inflated prices for air travel, PCR tests and compulsory hotel quarantine at great cost with no other option is common knowledge. All the above allegations, perhaps unfounded in some instances, are the result of a lack of transparency in the dealings.

I presented all these facts to show the importance of the public sector in meeting the basic needs of the populace on a daily basis and during an emergency. With corruption rampant at all levels, with no transparency at all, and when high-ranking wrongdoers are not punished when detected, it is extremely difficult to maintain an honest service by the public servants. Such culture of corruption trickles down to the lower tiers of the public service who get punished for offences like taking bribe of a few thousands of rupees. Generally, good honourable service is not rewarded to encourage them. Thus, this initiative of the local chapter of the Transparency International and the Integrity Icon programme to name and fame those public servants who went the extra mile in the service of humanity is praiseworthy.

I perused the records of the public officials named and famed by you since 2018. They come from all sectors in society and from all walks of life, some of them not even noticed by others in the course of their duties. This year,, too, I have no doubt the awardees deserve all the recognition they are given. I am happy that they were selected solely by an eminent panel of judges this year too.

I congratulate today’s awardees and wish them many more years of exemplary service. You are a beacon of light to the public service.

Let me conclude by congratulating all those involved in this noble task of recognizing the yeoman services rendered by the public servants. This will certainly encourage them to continue with their good work as well as influencing others to do likewise. I wish the Transparency International Sri Lanka and the Integrity Icon programme every success in the future.