Proposals for Budget 2017 from Trade Unions of Public sector, Statutory boards and Private sector were collected yesterday (24th Oct.) at a meeting held with the patronage of Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake at the Ministry of Finance. Representatives of several Public sector Trade Unions participated in this event. The proposals which should be included in the forthcoming Budget were discussed during this meeting.
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 pay tax as they are excluded in the tax system and streamline the public transport service. Each proposal was analyzed in detail during this meeting. The factors those could affect when implementing such proposals were also discussed in the meeting.
At that juncture, Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake said it should consider implementing those proposals in a manner which would provide maximum service to the public. A lot of people have been recruited to public sector in haphazard manner during the previous regime therefore, discussions were held to put such redundancies into productive purposes. Attention was drawn to occasions where some workers are compelled to do over time 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 Ravi Karunanayake 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 discussions similar to that of the today’s meeting were held in the past several weeks intending to present a more people friendly budget for 2017.
Commenting on behalf of the National Trade Union Federation, its President Saman Ratnapriya said that Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake responded very positively to his federation proposals. He also said that discussions of the kind will prove that it is ready to protect not only the rights of the working community but also to appear on behalf of the nationally important issues. Ratnapriya also said that the opportunity he had to have discussion with the Minister of Finance was significant as it enabled him to furnish his views towards a government affair such as making a national budget.
Deputy Treasury Secretary A.R. Deshapriya and Public Finance Policy Department’s Director General A.K. Senevirathna were also present in the meeting.