Ceylon Mercantile and General Workers Union,

His Excellency the President

Gotabaya Rajapaksha
President of the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
Presidential Secretariat
Colombo 01.

Your excellency,

We the undersigned trade unions of the Sri Lanka Council of the IndustriAll Global Union representing the private sector and semi Government sector employees, wish to draw your immediate attention to the following. These are issues that affect employees in the private and semi-government sectors in general and our members in particular.

1. As promised during the last presidential election in November 2019, the national minimum wage approved by the cabinet to be increased by Rs.2500/- has not been accordingly increased as the National  Minimum Wage Act No: 04  of 2016 has not been amended in order to implement the approved salary increase.

• The Rs.2,500/- salary increase for the public sector employees has not been given to the employees in the semi Government sector and as a result, more than 500,000 employees in this sector have been deprived their due salary increase.

While thanking Your Excellency for appointing a new Salary and Carder’s Commission to cover public, semi-government and the private sector, we wish to draw your attention to the fact that there are no trade union representatives included representing private and semi-government sectors.

We, therefore, urge you to take immediate steps to rectify the above-mentioned anomalies in favour of these sectors.

Further, we would like to urge you to give us and an opportunity to meet your honour to discuss above mention matters with more details.

Thank You

Yours Faithfully

Lesly Devendra                                                    Anton Marcus

General Secretary,                                                Co Secretary

Nidahas Sewaka Sangamaya                           Free Trade Zones &            General Services Employees Union

Silvester Jayakody                                              Lines Jayathilaka

General Secretary,                                     United Federation of Labour,

Ceylon Mercantile and General Workers Union,

Ranjan Perera

  Secretary,

National Union of Seafarers