Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayatissa - Minister of Health and Mass Media and Chief Government Whip
The Minister explained that the Government Printer appointment was made under the applicable Service Minute, which allows selection either from qualified senior Printing Service officers or from a Special Grade Sri Lanka Administrative Service officer. He said the current senior departmental officer is far short of the required progression period for substantive appointment and could only be appointed in an acting capacity with Public Service Commission concurrence. Accordingly, the Government appointed a qualified and experienced SLAS Special Grade officer to the post.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, I will answer specifically regarding the post of Government Printer. It is not fair to generalize to all appointments.
¶ 02 Under the Service Minute, the Government Printer can be appointed either from: - an Additional Government Printer of the Printing Service with required qualifications; or - a Sri Lanka Administrative Service officer of Special Grade.
¶ 03 Our recruitment ladder requires roughly 22 years from Assistant Government Printer to Government Printer (Assistant → Deputy [Class II] after 10 years → Senior Deputy [Class I] after 7 more years → Additional after 5 more years). The current most senior departmental officer was appointed Deputy Government Printer only on 2024.10.10—less than 1.5 years ago. Under the Minute, even he would require about 12.5 more years to qualify. Appointing from within could only be on an acting basis with Public Service Commission concurrence, not as a substantive appointment. Therefore, we have appointed a suitably qualified, experienced SLAS Special Grade officer.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Wednesday, 4 March 2026 ·No. 23360 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: Hon. (Dr.) Nalinda Jayatissa - Minister of Health and Mass Media and Chief Government Whip. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 4 March 2026. No. 23360. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/13340