Minister counters Opposition charges

Ishara MUDUGAMUWA

Public Administration and Home Affairs Minister W D J Seneviratne completely rejected the accusations made by the Opposition regarding new graduate appointments. Addressing the media at the Information Department yesterday, Minister Seneviratne said it was not an easy task to give appointments to a large number of graduates.

“However we have taken measures to give appointments to all graduates who obtained their graduate certificate before December 31, 2009. Graduates who obtained graduate certificates in 2010 and 2011 have to wait for jobs until 2013 and 2014 as there were large numbers of graduates who had been unemployed for six to seven years. We had to give priority to them,” he said.

Seneviratne said certain political parties were trying to find shortcomings in this huge task and make baseless comments.

“The UPFA provided a large umber of graduate appointments in 2005. There were some mistakes. But this time we managed to do it properly,” he said.

“In 2002, during the UNP regime, a large number of graduates struggled to get jobs The UNP didn’t give jobs to graduates,” the minister said.

Seneviratne said around 42,800 appointments have already been given and they will be qualified for permanency after six months.

“During the training period they will receive Rs 10,000 and Rs 23,500 salary including a Rs 15,215 basic salary. Other allowances will be given after they are absorbed to the permanent cadre. They will be entitled to all benefits enjoyed by the state sector employees such as leave, transfers, maternity leave, etc in terms of the the service minute. A majority of graduates are from the villages. This will help uplift the living standards of their families,” he said.

The majority of the selected graduates are from the Kurunegala district (6,367). The rest are Galle (3,203), Kandy (3,235), Ratnapura (2,007), Jaffna (2,238), Mullaitivu (131), Vavuniya (320), Kilinochchi (113), Mannar (303), Batticaloa (2,198), Trincomalee (478) and Ampara (737).

The minister said his ministry informed all ministries and government institutions to send their statistics on job availability for the graduates.

The Economic Development Ministry has taken measures to provide 16,478 placements for these graduates.Around 1,500 jobs will be available in the Public Administration and Home Affairs Ministry, 4,176 in local government bodies and 2,560 in the Agrarian Services and Wildlife Ministry.