Bilingual proficiency must for new Govt recruits

Rajmi Manatunga

COLOMBO: With a view to ‘bilingualise’ the public service, the Government has decided to make proficiency in both official languages mandatory for persons newly recruited to the service with effect from next month.

Accordingly, proficiency in Tamil will be made compulsory for all Sinhala speaking persons recruited to State institutions from July 1 while those speaking Tamil will also be required to prove their proficiency in Sinhala.

Constitutional Affairs and National Integration Minister D. E. W. Gunasekera told the media yesterday that if the new recruits to the public service and the provincial public service fail to acquire the required language skills within five years of the appointment, their increments will be deferred.

“The decision was made as part of the Government’s programme to give effect to the Constitutional provisions on official languages, especially Tamil, which have not been implemented even after two decades of their enactment.

We hope this measure would enable public servants to attend to the needs of minorities more effectively and facilitate better understanding between communities,” he said.

The Minister pointed out that although 25 per cent of the country’s population are Tamil speaking (nearly 61 per cent of them living outside the North and the East), only six per cent of the employees in the public service and 16 per cent in the provincial public service are conversant in Tamil.

“Therefore, the language barrier is one of the main problems faced by the general public in obtaining the services of State institutions. Similar problems are faced by the Sinhalese in the North and the East where the activates in most government offices are conducted in Tamil,” he said.

Gunasekera said that several programmes have been launched to teach Tamil to employees already in the public service. Accordingly, Tamil language courses are held in most government institutions while an incentive allowance has also been introduced for government employees acquiring proficiency in official languages.

As a further step in the implementation of the Official Languages Policy, the National Institute of Language Education and Training Bill was unanimously passed in Parliament on June 7.

“The Act provides for the establishment of a separate institute for the intensive training of government employees in the official languages. The premises where the Institute is to be set up has already been earmarked and the Government has allocated Rs. 45 million for this purpose,” he said.

He added that the establishment of the Institute was a landmark given the lethargic attitude exhibited by the authorities in the past in giving effect to the Official Language Policy.