ECONOMY-SRI LANKA: Too Many Holidays Queer Big Growth Bid

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, May 4 1999 (IPS) - Hopes of Sri Lanka becoming an industrialised nation in the new millennium could turn out to be a dream as growing losses in productivity and too many holidays continue to plague this country.

Sri Lanka has the highest number of holidays in the world. According to several studies, here people work less than half the year helped by generous public holidays, leave allotments and cultural norms.

Repeated strikes in the public and private sectors and other reasons like natural calamities have contributed to falling productivity.

No wonder editorial writers “fondly” call the Indian Ocean nation of 18 million people as the land of lotus-eaters.

“We have been left far behind in the race for development. It is only due to the resilience of the private sector that the country has achieved some kind of growth despite losses in productivity and the malady of too many holidays,” says Patrick Amarasinghe, former president of the Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FCCI) and a top furniture maker.

Sri Lanka has been able to achieve an annual average growth rate of around 5 percent in the past few years in spite of low productivity and a 17-year-old ethnic conflict that is squeezing the country’s resources.

Government planners have often expressed concern over low productivity and too many holidays but politicians are reluctant to trim holidays as it risks turning voters away.

Workers in the public sector enjoy a total of 172 holidays inclusive of 26 days of national and religious holidays, leaving just 198 days for work. This is not counting the annual leave allotment of about 40 days which most people take.

In the banking sector, employees put in 207 days of work per year while in the private sector, people work for about 250 days. In both, employees often don’t take their leave entitlements, preferring to take advantage of cash-for-leave schemes.

A committee headed by a deputy minister that was set up by the present government to review the holiday structure, recommended reducing national holidays to 19 from 26 and rationalising the structure.

But protests from trade unions and other worker organisations blocked these proposals. “The committee has died a natural death,” said Amarasinghe, a committee member.

Sri Lankans love the traditional Sinhala and Tamil New Year holidays-filled month of April, which is the worst in terms of productivity. This year it was particularly bad in view of elections and three days of floods in the capital.

Nouzab Fareed, a young researcher at the Mercantile Merchant Bank, reckons the country would have lost billion of rupees worth of productivity during the 8-10 days of the New Year season.

Lal De Mel, FCCI’s current president, says that focus on productivity has been poor and despite requests from the private sector, the government has not put into place, a proper productivity measurement standard.

“In any other country, management is able to say at what level productivity has improved in a particular segment and by what percentage salaries have increased, and whether that segment is becoming more competitive or not. If salaries go up faster than productivity, we then become less competitive,” he said.

De Mel said that low productivity was making Sri Lanka less competitive. “In the past, even if industries did not do well they were protected by tariff barriers. But that era is over with globalisation and dismantling of protective tariffs. We have to be productive to stay competitive. Otherwise we lose out.”

Dr Anila Dias Bandaranaike, an economist at the Central Bank, says that as long as wages are linked to productivity, Sri Lanka will suffer a low rate of productivity. “We are paying high wages, for instance in the tea sector, where workers are assured of a minimum daily wage irrespective of how much the produce.”

She said costs of local commodities like vegetables and fruits have also risen due to high wage costs, making it much cheaper to import these items from countries where wages are linked to productivity.

Sociologist Prof Siripala Hettige looks at Sri Lanka’s problem in a slightly different context. He believes loss of productivity reflects a wider issue in society than holidays alone.

“The problem is that we are not being rationale in terms of

dividing work and leisure. This is a reflection of our own society and culture,” he said.

He said that shops or offices close suddenly for people to attend a funeral, wedding or some other social function and this is part and parcel of Sri Lankan society. But in most developed countries, work is separated from leisure or social happenings.

Chronic absenteeism in the public sector and workers having to spend a minimum of five to six hours to commute are problems that could be resolved with good planning, said Hettige, head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Colombo.

Many people travel long distances due to the exorbitant cost of living in the capital. Employers should be living close to their offices in a country where the public transport is poor, Hettige says.