Are our government advisers stupid?
By A. Denis N. Fernando
Fellow of National Academy of Sciences
Counsel Member, Citizens Movement for Good Governance
Our advisers instead of changing the time to suit the children by
delaying the opening of schools by half an hour, in their stupidity are
trying to change the Sri Lanka Standard Time to turn the clock
forward. Countries of the whole world determine their standard time on
the basis of its Meridian based on their geographic position.
In 1996, it was the scientists and technologists who advised the
government to advance the Standard Time by half an hour on the
basis of its meridian to take full advantage of its daylight hours. By
doing so we were able to save over 20 million Gigawatt hours of
electricity per year saving billions of rupees and prevented the
unnecessary wastage of energy.
In the good old days we had the elite Civil Service comprising proven
intelligent highly qualified graduates amounting to about eight
recruited to the Civil Service per year. They were drawn from
scientists, technologists and those from the arts faculty. On the basis
of their knowledge policy decisions were taken by the government for
the development of our country.
With the replacement of the elite Civil Service and the creation of the
Sri Lanka Administrative Service, hundreds entered that service every
year both competent and incompetent. We have the phenomena
where clerks are promoted to that service and even end up as
Additional Secretaries and Secretaries of ministries and are expected
to advise ministers on, specialised subjects.
It is a well known axiom "little knowledge is a dangerous ‘thing". But
today we have SLAS officers who have no knowledge on specialised
matters pertaining to that ministry and thereby we have got into a
situation with officers having no knowledge and is clearly a very
dangerous thing. What is worse is that the minister who does not know
the subject he is in-charge, and very often has a Secretary who also
does not know the subject.
It is a clear case of "the blind leading the blind". It is a very unfortunate
position facing our country, and it is very clear that we must have
subject matter specialists to assist the ministers in giving correct
advice. It is the absence of which has created this lacuna.
The moment this is changed like in Singapore, the quicker we can get
out of this mess we have got into. This should be our priority number
one as we would otherwise go from bad to worse. To reiterate we
should delay the opening of the schools for our children by half an
hour and not attempt to delay our standard time because this has
been done on the correct scientific advise to take full advantage of our
day-light hours depending on the geographic position of Sri Lanka
and would in turn save billion of rupees to our exchequer. [Island]
