Letters to the Editor

No radiotherapy, only shoddy treatment
The general public may be unaware of the raw deal that cancer patients requiring radium therapy are presently getting due to a "go-slow" on the part of the radiographers at the Maharagama Cancer Institute.

I have kept in touch with a cousin who has to have radium therapy. The first ten sessions were fine - he was allotted a slot at 7.30 a.m. and things went smoothly for all patients. But then suddenly the patients faced untold hardship, because the radiographers were on a "go-slow" to press their demand for better overtime payments.

Patients come from faraway places, not sure of when they will receive the treatment. Yet they join a queue from as early as 4 a.m. They are lucky if they have a friend or relative who will stand in the queue for them for four hours. The cards are collected at 8 a.m. and then these sufferers from cancer are kept on tenterhooks, hoping and praying that they will be called for treatment that day.

It is no joke for a patient who has waited patiently from 4 or 5 a.m. to be told at 10 o'clock that he/she will have to go home and come the next day. Last Tuesday, the woman at the beginning of the queue, for instance, had taken her position at 4 a.m. and she was standing in for her sister who was the patient.

Another woman from Wellawatte said she brought her breakfast and lunch when she came to the Cancer Institute. Not only the out-patients, but patients warded at Maharagama also come for treatment. One such patient, who could not walk, said she had to pay Rs. 50 each time she asked an attendant to take her on a wheelchair.

There are patients who come from places where there is no early morning bus service, so they find shelter in a Buddhist temple nearby where they may stay overnight and come early the next morning to the Institute. This makes other patients feel that they must leave their homes early enough to beat the people from the temple in the race to get to a front place in the queue! One patient who had been denied treatment on Monday, had tried to persuade those in charge to give him a slot on Tuesday. The reply he got was: "If you start to worry us ("karadara karanna patang gaththoth..."), we will just close the doors and leave!”

Is such an inhuman attitude towards men, women and children who are suffering from cancer, to be permitted for whatever reason?

Before Terri, there was Karen
Here's another tragic story similar to that of Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman in Florida.

Karen Quinlan, a 22-year-old woman had been in an irreversible coma for more than one year as a result of an overdose of drugs. In March 1976, her parents got a ruling from a New Jersey Court to disconnect their daughter's respirator. Three months later she was taken off the machine and was expected to die in a short time but survived for nearly a decade, passing away of pneumonia in 1985.

How do we relate this to Terri Schiavo's case which has now caused a major ethical, political and legal debate? Indeed, it is an amazingly complicated case.

Fee-levying universities will stop the rot
Let us put an end to the ludicrous situation that exists in this country. Thousands of youth are given free higher education at the taxpayers' expense. Many of them are in addition to free education, are given financial grants to qualify ultimately as graduates. Some of those who pass out as medical graduates hold the state and poor patients to ransom (they even object to students qualifying outside the state universities). During their student days, a majority of them become tools in the hands of political groups and resort to strikes, thuggery and other acts in addition to causing inconvenience to the general public.

Once they pass out of the universities, comes the next step in the charade. Most private sector establishments do not want to touch them even with the end of a barge pole, preferring to recruit uncorrupted school-leavers who can be trained to fit in to the private sector. Then the majority of them join the ranks of a category called the unemployed and under-employed graduates. They resume the Upavasas and the Maranthika Upavasas and a naive government hoping to scrounge some votes recruits them into the already overstaffed state service. Why in heaven's name are we churning out unwanted and unemployable graduates at the taxpayers' expense?

Why are we permitting doctors to hold poor patients and the government to ransom? Most of the office bearers in the GMOA are young. Should not some experienced seniors hold office in the GMOA? Should we not limit free education up to and including secondary education making higher education fee levying? Any poor and deserving student could be given Mahapola scholarships.

We say, "Hats off to Tara de Mel" for the firm stand that she is taking. A student's business is to study and not to try to dictate to the government on policy matters. He/she should realize that another child has been deprived of a place in the university to accommodate him/her.

Calculators not the answer
According to the results of the last G.C.E. O/L examination, 60% of the candidates had failed in Mathematics. In order to increase the percentage of passes the authorities intend to permit the use of calculators at the examination.

This is indeed a pointless exercise where half baked mathematicians would be produced. If calculators are to be used at examinations the pupils would have to be given a further training in the use of calculators. That would debar the pupils from grasping the basic concepts of mathematics, namely addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

If these basics are properly taught, mathematics would be an interesting subject. More than half the pupils in the G.C.E. O/L class in any school do not know the multiplication tables by heart. The reason for this is the automatic promotions the pupils are given each year.

100-metre buffer: Protests must be based on scientific facts
The decision made by the Government, consequent to the destructive and tragic after effects of the December 26 tsunami, not to permit any permanent reconstructions or new structures within a 100-metre buffer zone, appears to have been made on the basis of expert advice given by coast conservationists, environmentalists, meteorologists and experts on earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, cyclones etc. Thus, it cannot be imagined, under any circumstances, to be a flippant, thoughtless, spur of the moment decision, taken for selfish reasons or to achieve some narrow political objectives.

It is a courageous decision in the national interest. Obviously, this decision, was not going to please the tsunami-affected people, because they would lose their traditional land and homes. However, what is shocking is the reaction and attitude of some of the major opposition party politicians (mind you, not all) who are opposing the 100-metre buffer zone, by their protests, demonstrations and media pronouncements.

If there are scientific reasons for their objections, then certainly the 100-metre buffer zone restriction has to be reconsidered by the government. But, is this the case?

The critics of the 100-metre zone should also prove that their objection is in the national interest. This is not, by any means, a political issue. This is a matter affecting the nation as a whole and whatever the decision, it has to be for the greater good of the country. It should not be a case of the opposition opposing every government move.

Rather than resorting to chicanery and politicising matters of national importance, it would be far better for the opposition to prove, with the support, assistance and advice of scientists and experts in this particular field that the government is wrong. If the opposition does so, surely the people of this country will accept its stand and reject the stand taken by the government.

Then, and only then, will the people accept the opposition actions as being in the interests of the country and nation and not political gimmicks directed at the gallery.

Who knows, even Prabhakaran may give up the 500-metre buffer zone in LTTE-controlled areas in the East and accept the opposition's scientific and expertise-backed logic?

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