NE to be separate units from January

The Northern and Eastern Provinces will have separate ‘Administrative Secretariats’ and two Governors from January, effectively treating the two Provinces as separate units, ministerial sources said. The moves would be giving effect to the Supreme Court ruling in October which held that the temporary merger of the Northern and Eastern Provinces had no validity.

Under the new plan the Administrative Secretariat for the Northern Province is to be set up in Vavuniya while the Secretariat for the East is to be located in Kalmunai in the Ampara district. The Sunday Times learns that the government was planning to take a series of other measures under which the Northern and Eastern Provinces would be treated as two separate provinces.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa this week discussed with his officials about the establishment of the two separate administrative Secretariats. All transfers in the two provinces due to come into effect in January have been suspended with immediate effect. Accordingly, the staff of the Northern and Eastern Provincial Council office based in Trincomalee is to be divided between the Northern and Eastern Administrative Secretariat offices.

The Northern and Eastern Provinces were temporarily merged under the 13th Amendment following the the Indo-Lanka Peace Accord in 1987. Until the JVP challenged the merger in courts, the temporary merger was being extended by a Presidential decree every year. The move to treat the North and East as separate provinces comes in the wake of fresh clashes around the Vakarai area amidst fears that the military would launch an operation to break the LTTE’s links between the north and the east.

The Budgetary allocations for the two provinces have been made separately for 2007 enabling the government to treat the two provinces as separate units. Mohan Wijewickrama was sworn in as Eastern Province Governor on Friday in addition to being the governor for the Northern Province.

Earlier the TNA urged President Rajapaksa to end the temporary merger of the two provinces, but the President had explained that due to the court ruling it could not remain as one unit.