Are our government advisers stupid?

“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.”

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by A. Denis N. Fernando

(March 01, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) 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.

(The writer Fellow of National Academy of Sciences , Counsel Member, Citizens Movement for Good Governance )