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No justice from Telecom
A telephone number of a resident of Ja-ela has been inadvertently included in the book issued by the Office of the Chief Government Whip in Parliament as the official telephone number of the Justice and Judicial Reforms Minister. Since the book came out about two months ago, the man is being flooded by calls asking for the minister.

When a scribe called the same number, the resident quipped that he would like to be a minister but he wasn't and his wife was cursing him because of the never-ending calls coming to his home asking for a person who didn't live there.

His complaints to the Telecom Department have so far fallen on deaf ears.
Looks like there is no justice in this case.

No loud-mouthed address
The Sri Lanka Bureau of Foreign Employment had organised an ifthar ceremony for last Thursday. The guest of honour was named as Labour Relations and Foreign Employment Deputy Minister Mervyn Silva and included in the programme was an address by him.

The function began and ended with no such address. The organisers may have felt, at least in this instance, that "silence would be golden."

Coordination!
A scribe called up the Cultural Affairs and National Heritage Ministry Secretary to check on a letter addressed by the minister in charge of the ministry to a foreign mission regarding a book that was seen as detrimental to Sri Lanka.

The irate Secretary snapped back that the minister sends many letters each day and he was unaware of any such letter and added the minister has a private secretary to handle his letters. So much for co-ordination between ministers and their ministry secretaries.

Not to their liking
In a bid to restore esteem to the public service the office of the Bribery Commission has distributed copies of a pledge to be taken by all public servants in the future.

However not everyone is happy with some of the wording in it particularly a line which states that public servants who do not maintain high standards in the service and bring dishonour to it will be a disgrace to their parents and a curse on the future generations of the country.

Hence one departmental head, some of whose staff have earned a reputation for pocketing money and accepting other favours from members of the public in exchange for speeding up the work, has written to the Bribery Commission asking that the part about "disgracing the parents" and being "a curse on the future generations" be omitted.

Maybe there is a fear that taking such a pledge would put the brakes on the present pace of trafficking in that place.

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