A cross-talk broke out in Parliament on Tuesday between Leader of the House Bimal Ratnayake and Committee on Public Finance (COPF) Chairman Harsha de Silva over a proposal to increase the monthly salary of the Auditor General.
The exchange began when Dr. de Silva said the committee would take up the proposal during the day and that the House could deal with it within the course of this week, the Daily Mirror reported.
Minister Ratnayake responded that the committee should give the proposal the green light the same day, so that the House could then improve on it.
Two objections
Dr. de Silva raised a threshold question rather than one about the amount. He said there is an issue over whether the Auditor General can be considered a government officer at all — a classification that determines which salary framework applies to the post.
He also objected to the manner in which the change was being pursued, saying laws cannot be changed simply to please one person.
Carried over from Monday
The disagreement is a continuation of business the COPF left unfinished a day earlier. When the committee met on Monday and cleared a Rs. 71.7 billion relief package tied to the Middle East conflict, deliberations on the Auditor General’s salary — along with wider public sector salary structures — were carried over to a later sitting without a decision.
The Auditor General heads the National Audit Office, the body that audits government ministries, departments and state enterprises and reports to Parliament. The office’s independence from the executive is the reason its holder’s terms of service are set separately from those of the general public service, and the reason the question of whether the post-holder counts as a government officer is not a formality.
Update: committee approved the salary, Parliament confirmed it
The COPF went on to approve the salary at that same Tuesday sitting, and Parliament approved the increment unanimously on Wednesday, August 5, setting the Auditor General’s pay on a par with that of a Ministry Secretary, the Daily Mirror reported.
Ada Derana published the committee’s full readout on August 7, citing Parliament’s Department of Communication. It shows the committee resolved the threshold question Dr. de Silva had raised: it observed that “the Auditor General is not a public officer” under Article 170 of the Constitution, which allows the salary to be set outside the existing public sector scale. The proposal was taken up under Article 153(2) of the Constitution.
Officials told the committee the proposed figure was arrived at after reviewing the pay of previous Auditors General, and noted that while such salaries had previously been set by the National Salaries and Cadre Commission, “no such Commission is currently in operation.”
While approving the salary, the committee said that given the significance of the office the remuneration should be at a higher level, and undertook to revisit it. Dr. de Silva proposed establishing a permanent and independent Salaries and Cadre Commission.
The sitting was attended by Deputy Ministers Chathuranga Abeysinghe and Nishantha Jayawera and MPs Ravi Karunanayake, Nimal Palihena, Wijesiri Basnayake, M.K.M. Aslam, Thilina Samarakoon and Champika Hettiarachchi.
