Colombo: Threatened Sri Lanka Asking civil servants to take an extra day off every week to grow crops in their backyards to prevent a heat wave. lack of food,
The island nation’s unprecedented economic downturn has cut supplies of many key food items, along with petrol and medicines, and largely inflation Wasting the budget of the house.
“It seems appropriate to grant government officials a holiday for one working day of the week and provide them with necessary facilities to engage in agricultural activities in their backyards,” the cabinet said in a statement on Tuesday.
The extra day off will be “a solution to future food shortages”, the statement said, adding that cutting down on movement of civil servants would also help reduce fuel consumption.
Last week the United Nations warned that Sri Lanka was facing a “serious humanitarian crisis”, and said four out of five people in the country of 22 million were forced to skip meals.
Meanwhile, motorists have faced shortage of petrol and diesel for months, and long queues of vehicles outside filling stations are a regular sight across the country.
According to the decision of the cabinet, government employees will get leave every Friday without deduction of salary for the next three months, but this arrangement will not be applicable to the employees of essential services.
The government also said that 15 lakh members of the public sector who want to travel abroad to find work will be given unpaid leave of up to five years without affecting their seniority or pension.
The move is intended to encourage more people to find foreign jobs and send money back to the island, which is laboring under a severe shortage of foreign exchange to buy imports.
Sri Lanka has defaulted on its foreign debt of 51 billion dollars and is in talks with International Monetary Fund for a bailout.
The public has demanded the resignation of the President Gotabaya Rajapakse On the mismanagement of the country’s economy and the serious difficulties faced by its people.
Rajapaksa, who has been accused of leaving the island without the means to pay for essential imports, introduced sweeping tax cuts soon after coming to power in November.
was further aggravated due to shortage of cash covid-19 pandemicWhich devastated the local tourism industry and cut off remittances sent back home by Sri Lankans working abroad.
The island nation’s unprecedented economic downturn has cut supplies of many key food items, along with petrol and medicines, and largely inflation Wasting the budget of the house.
“It seems appropriate to grant government officials a holiday for one working day of the week and provide them with necessary facilities to engage in agricultural activities in their backyards,” the cabinet said in a statement on Tuesday.
The extra day off will be “a solution to future food shortages”, the statement said, adding that cutting down on movement of civil servants would also help reduce fuel consumption.
Last week the United Nations warned that Sri Lanka was facing a “serious humanitarian crisis”, and said four out of five people in the country of 22 million were forced to skip meals.
Meanwhile, motorists have faced shortage of petrol and diesel for months, and long queues of vehicles outside filling stations are a regular sight across the country.
According to the decision of the cabinet, government employees will get leave every Friday without deduction of salary for the next three months, but this arrangement will not be applicable to the employees of essential services.
The government also said that 15 lakh members of the public sector who want to travel abroad to find work will be given unpaid leave of up to five years without affecting their seniority or pension.
The move is intended to encourage more people to find foreign jobs and send money back to the island, which is laboring under a severe shortage of foreign exchange to buy imports.
Sri Lanka has defaulted on its foreign debt of 51 billion dollars and is in talks with International Monetary Fund for a bailout.
The public has demanded the resignation of the President Gotabaya Rajapakse On the mismanagement of the country’s economy and the serious difficulties faced by its people.
Rajapaksa, who has been accused of leaving the island without the means to pay for essential imports, introduced sweeping tax cuts soon after coming to power in November.
was further aggravated due to shortage of cash covid-19 pandemicWhich devastated the local tourism industry and cut off remittances sent back home by Sri Lankans working abroad.