President Ranil Wickramasinghe has given instructions to streamline the process of answering letters, e-mails and phone calls sent by the public to government institutions.
The President focused on streamlining the process of accomplishing related tasks by promptly responding to the letters, e-mails and phone calls sent by the public rather than constantly visiting government institutions to accomplish a certain task by spending time, effort and money.
Priority should be given to letters addressed to government institutions from the public, and in the event that a final reply cannot be sent immediately, an interim reply stating that the letter has been received should be sent within a week and a final reply should be sent within four (04) weeks is emphasized.
Also, for all official letters, the direct telephone number, fax number and e-mail address of the staff officer in charge of the subject should be mentioned below the signature of the relevant letter when sending the reply letters.
Emails sent to public email addresses in offices should be checked daily and a specific officer should be appointed for the purpose. Emails to staff officers’ email addresses should be checked daily.
You should try to answer on the same day for the letters received on the e-mail addresses, and if you cannot answer them on the same day, you should send a reply stating that the letter was received and the time required to answer it. In the same way, arrangements should be made to provide answers to the inquiry within a reasonable time/ before the notified date.
All phone calls to the office should be answered and if there are organizations/departments that receive a lot of phone calls, a specific officer should be appointed to answer those calls.
A specific officer should be appointed to record phone calls received to the offices and that officer should record information such as the name of the person who made the phone calls, the matter and the phone number to which a reply should be forwarded.
At the same time, regarding matters that are difficult to answer, the concerned staff bureaucrats/ bureaucrats in charge should arrange to give answers within a reasonable time.
Accordingly, a special letter signed by the Secretary of the Ministry of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils and Local Government, including provisions in replying to letters, e-mails and telephone calls directed to the government institutions, as per the instructions of the President’s Secretary, to all Ministry Secretaries, Provincial Chief Secretaries and Heads of departments has been sent.
