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Morning Spice by
Ginger Ginger wrote about the need for medical labs and consultation clinics outside the city proper. The reasons he laid out for this rather urgent need were because the old and the infirm who were not mechanized or chauffeur driven found it difficult to get to the city. Once there they had to wait in many instances to get their tests done or if they wanted to see a specialist they had to wait like herded cattle for their turn as they were cramped for space. Ginger got a pleasant surprise when he got a call from a place called Healthline. They asked Ginger whether he could remember the piece he wrote and they were starting the very service he suggested. The clinic they said was conveniently located on Dutugamunu Street on the Nugegoda, Kohuwala border. The place seems to have a more human face than many other such places because it offers those over 65 a 15% discount and for a nominal upfront annual payment its mobile service will call at your residence as often as you need them. According to their spokesman who spoke to me at length they have got the best and most modern equipment available and offers a virtually fully computerized service. They will also have a consultation service. No doubt this establishment will be more than a boon for those at the southern end, of the city and the suburbs around it. Let’s hope more of them will come up elsewhere as well. Bovine tax There is one place that serves essentially Chinese dishes to its elite clientele that thinks otherwise. A friend of Ginger’s ordered dinner from there as some friends of hers had dropped in at her home. She asked the restaurant concerned how much they would charge for certain items and sent her car for them. She got a shock to find the bill had come to almost 25% more than the prices quoted. They had charged 12 1/2% GST and 10% service charges. Insensitivity and conflict Now both Hindus and Muslims are not allowed to eat either forms of flesh. They had to bite the bullets before they were loaded and the troops refused to do that and some cavalry troopers were court marshalled for refusing to do it. Shortly after that three regiments revolted and marched on Delhi starting a bloody conflict. Public service and the back-scratching syndrome This has reference to the letter on "Lethargic public servants" by Pro Bono Publico PBP of Mt. Lavinia (June 10 ). He laments that discipline in government service has gone to the dogs since the demise of the late President Premadasa. I have read one or two letters even before claiming that there was perfect discipline in the public service and all government institutions functioned very efficiently then. Those senior officers working very close to him and a few others who were directly involved in his pet projects no doubt, worked day and night to please him through fear that they would be fired or pulled up in public for he had no respect for even senior officers because he was a knowall whom nobody would dare question and because they were given all the facilities with scanty respect for administrative and financial regulations - facilities that their counterparts in other ministries never enjoyed. PBP talks of the non-observance of the three day rule. This is a thing of the past that went by the board at least 30 years ago. One could take a safe bet that the large majority of today's government servants have no idea of it and have not even seen the printed post card used for the purpose. Today this form may not be available in some of the government offices. Reporting late to work and leaving early was as rampant them as it is today. The large number of government servants travelling from long distances cannot report for work on time because these office trains reach Colombo invariably after 8.30. Evening express trains like Ruhunu Kumari that leave Colombo around 2.30 or 3 p.m. used to be full of government servants even then. Strangely enough they claim the seats they normally occupy to be permanently 'theirs' and do not want any intruders. If the public service was so disciplined and efficient then what need was there to hold mobile ministerial services in various parts of the country at tremendous cost to solve people's problems? Sadly enough the present government is continuing the same service under a different name! PBP mentions how staff officers are transferred out keeping back clerks to repeat their nefarious activities. Does he mean that this did not happen during the Premadasa era? Not only clerks but even minor employees were more influential than staff officers. Instances are too many to quote. With regard to the delay in replying to letters, I had as a government servant dealings with a ministry under Premadasa in connection with a project very close to his heart. His middle grade staff officers failed to send an official receipt for some payments - given to me as an advance - by my Ministry for over six months and they opened their eyes only after a very senior officer was contacted. This happened twice. That explains the efficiency in his ministries. Everybody tried to please him but not to do an honest job of work. PBP suggests that deterrent punishment should be given to miscreants in the government services. This is taking the stick at the wrong end. I hold no brief for public servants who neglect their duty, but the blame for the sorry state in the government service has to be borne squarely by politicos of all colours who have used the public servants to meet their private ends. This political interference, nepotism and partisanship is the bane of the country today. It is a-you-scratch-my-back and I-will-scratch-your-back scenario for most politicos and government servants. Those who cannot join in the scratch business never make their mark. Until this cancer is removed through a major operation in which the surgeon himself might lose his life, the country will never progress and the public service will deteriorate further and further. PBP unwittingly contradicts all he has said before when in his concluding sentence he says "The discipline our colonial masters maintained is now a thing of the past". Well, the public service maintained a high standard of discipline, efficiency and independence for some time after the colonial masters handed over the reins to us, but died a natural death about 40 years ago when sanga, veda, guru, govi, kamkaru were swallowed up by politicians and the coffin sealed when non-executive grade public servants were given political rights. So after all, it is very doubtful whether anybody could maintain the claim that the public service went to the dogs after the demise of the late President Premadasa because the rot had set in long before. S. Abeywickrama Salary arrears of principals since 1.1.95 All the teachers serving in the government schools were absorbed into the Sri Lanka Teachers' Service on 6.10.94. They were paid their arrears of salary due to them from 1.1.95. The Ministry of Education issued a statement to the effect that the principals too would be paid their arrears from 1.1.95. But so far nothing positive has been done to pay the principals. The principals find themselves badly discriminated against in the wake of the fact that the assistant teachers in their own schools, working under the same roof had been paid their dues and the heads of schools were not. It really causes heartburn pampering the assistant teachers as against the principals is terribly painful. Further, it is rather surprising and really paradoxical to note that the treasury had enough funds to pay the assistant teachers, who constitute a very large number, whereas it hasn't enough funds to pay the arrears to the principals, who constitute a smaller number. The arrears of the assistant teachers would have been a pretty massive figure and the arrears of the principals wouldn't be that large. This is discrimination. Much depends on the mentality of the authorities concerned. Payment of arrears of assistant teachers would have cost a colossal sum of money. The authorities were keen and prompt in paying such a tremendously big amount to the assistant teachers', and they find it tremendously difficult to pay a comparatively lesser/smaller amount to principals. Where there is a will, there is a way. Teachers, arrears were paid on the basis of monthly instalments. But our's have ben delayed and dragged on for well over three strenuous years. The Provincial Council, Western Province took the right step in paying the arrears to the principals, thinking that salary arrears are their legitimate dues. Depriving them of their dues is unjustifiable. The request of the heads of schools in the other provinces was ignored. The other provincial councils didn't do justice to the principals or act fair by the principals. It is only the Western Province Provincial Council, that has given due consideration to the fact that when the welfare of the principals is ignored, the principals in turn ignore the welfare of the schools. Payment of the arrears would really serve as an incentive to principals. Principals are also human beings — when they suffer and feel that they are being discriminated against, won't they lose interest? Repeated requests and representations made to the secretary, Provincial Ministry of Education, NEPC Trincomalee, have fallen on deaf years. Denial of salary dues is to be construed as a real punishment inflicted on principals. Depriving one of one's due payment is a travesty of justice. These arrears are arrears of our salary which should not be denied to us. The principals are not asking for shoe allowance or uniform allowance as the nurses did. They are not asking for overtime payment as the postal employees did. Even though the principals work overtime or engage themselves in extra curricular activities outside school hours or after school hours they don't claim overtime payment or extra payment. But now the principals are asking for only their salary dues of, their living wage, their subsistence wage. We pose these questions (1) If you deny our living wage itself, what else are you going to give us? (2) If the assistant teachers are entitled to the arrears of salary, who not the heads of schools, the persons why actually run the schools? (3) If the principals of schools in the Western Province are entitled to the arrears, why not the principals of the other provinces? (4) Why can't the other provincial councils also do as the Western Province Provincial Council did? (5) Why can't the PC's pay us on monthly instalments just like they did for the assistant teachers? Will the Minister Education look into the matter? S.
Sabasubramaniam, The telephone directory fiasco It is now well over two months that I have been trying to get my copy of the directory for the current year even though six months have already passed. I have in the process been directed from one telephone number to another and the last number was 350491 to which I lodged my complaint. It is now over a week and I have still to receive my copy. In the meanwhile I received a circular letter from the CEO of Sri Lanka Telecom Ltd., advising subscribers about various benefits Telecom now offers. What I would like to ask the CEO is whether the distribution of directories take that long in Japan, as this is the first instance that we have experienced such a delay — and this after the much talked about privatisation. The other point I wish to raise with the CEO is that how come that with the introduction of so called improvements, particularly in the field of efficiency, that faults that were previously attended to within 24 hours by the Kotte Exchange now takes about a week to rectify after we subscribers were requested to contact 121 to report faults? I know that the Telecom is being given a run by competitor land based tele companies, the only way to match them is "efficiency" but what can you expect from Telecom if they are unable to distribute the directories in time? They cannot wash their hands off the matter by stating that a courier company has been entrusted with the distribution. We would like to know, who this courier company is? What are their credentials? What is their experience in locating subscribers? Is this courier company connected to any high-ups etc.? What do I now do Mr. CEO/Telecom? Subscriber It is with heartburn I think of pointing out the injustices the poor innocent people are undergoing in Batticaloa. They see no way to voice their grievances. No one dares to approach the authorities to make their complain. Even if they do, no action is being taken. People are bent to obey too many masters. The administration in Batticaloa district is under the control of the government. There is war in Jaffna but Batticaloa is free from any such war. I see no fruitful development here. If there is no war in Batticaloa, why don't any of the ministers visit Batticaloa to see what is happening here? The public of Batticaloa feel that in the Sinhalese areas, everything is going on smoothly. Many kinds of new developments, transfers of public servants, scholarships etc. are taking place. In Batticaloa, there are no transfers. In certain departments, some officers stick to their chair for number of years, some even from the date of their first appointment. Only a certain section of the people enjoy the benefits through their influence. There are more educationally qualified youths in the Batticaloa district. Than in the Sinhalese areas. But they are jobless. All the vacancies given by the government are sold only to people who could buy for a good price. The sale is according to the type and rank of the job. The poor stomach their grievances among themselves. Environmental pollution is another factor which the environmental authorities should look into by issuing licences to the particular sectors. Thereby, underhand activities could be avoided. The movements have been provided with weapons which the innocent public fear. The public are worried why the government is reluctant to withdraw their arms. They are longing to live in peace and harmony without any arms. Hope the government will look into this. Everyone in Sri Lanka are aware that only the Tamil and Sinhalese youths are dying in the ethnic war. Each one is killing the other to open a road to Jaffna. When all have died in this war who is there to use that road? Yatiyana Pangnaloka Thero The man who called himself Tissahamy is no more. Eulogies have been heaped upon him by press and politicians. The tax-payer even pays for his funeral. The man who called himself Tissahamy was neither a Veddah nor was his name Tissahamy. He came from the south, a pure Sinhlese, and moved in with the Dambana crowd of Village Veddahs. These people had long ago lost any separate cultural identity. Already a hundred years ago they were known as 'show Veddahs' to researchers such as Seligmann. Dr. Spittel attributed to them the same character. This group of 'Veddahs', in whose veins circulates mostly Sinhalese blood, used to live in houses and cultivated the soil in Dambana, a village not directly affected by the Mahaweli development, nor by the establishment of the Maduru Oya National Park. Nevertheless, they were offered irrigated land at Kalegama near Henanigala, only few miles away as the crow flies. When the park was established for the protection of the Maduru Oya, Ulhitiya, Ratkinda and Henanigala reservoirs and the connecting waterways, hundreds of Sinhalese cultivators and settlers were moved out, but no 'Veddahs' were forced to give up any land, nor their mode of life; all were in fact offered a better future, and all accepted. The exception was Sinhala "Tissahamy", who despite all the pious environmental platitudes aped from foreign visitors, had always been a show-man, out for the easy and fast buck. So he and his immediate family remained in the area and clear-felled for themselves from primary jungle a large piece of land, illegally and situated within the boundaries of the new national park. On this land he built a large house. He cultivated bananas, hillies and other crops, and received his foreign and local visitors. Hotelliers and touts in Kandy sell tours to the "Veddahs", by which they mean Tissahamy's illegal clearing. Nothing is free there. You pay for speaking to him, to watch the phoney acts and dances and ineffectual skills, and you pay for taking pictures. No one here is capable of living by "hunting, collecting bees" honey or chasing an iguana"! Poachers they always were, but not with the bow and arrow. Tissahamy's photographs clearly disprove the claim that he was a Veddah. His physiognomy is that of a Sinhalese. His full and well developed beard, and most particularly the moustache and the well formed eyebrows and nose betray the Sinhalese, without a drop of Veddah blood in him. If this man is to be eulogized, it is certainly not as a fighter for a "traditional homeland" or his "humble" pleas to Government, or his love for the jungle or the culture of his people. No, he should be eulogized for having been the most successful humbug of recent times, and the most impudent impostor who managed to bamboozle all and sundry, including the press. A pontificating writer even confounds him with Dr. Spittel's famous Tissahamy, a murderer and a true Veddah and leader, long since dead. Spittel would turn in his grave! It is he who said, well over 50 years ago, that there are no pure-blooded Veddahs left in Sri Lanka. Why can't we just accept the fact and leave it at that? B. D. J. Niyangoda, |
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