Letters to the Editor

Leading towards darkness

The writer seems to be unaware that not only Catholics but also Buddhists including the clergy and Muslims strongly oppose the proposed coal power plant. 

Mr. Subasinghe also seems to have forgotten that Noraichcholai is only the third site earmarked for the power plant, after those in the south and east described by the CEB as ideal sites, were abandoned due to protests.

Who should be held responsible for those?

Lydwine Kirieldeniya
Chilaw

Inhuman humans

Great men like the Buddha and Gandhi made this word paramount in their teaching and preaching. Every living being, human or animal has a right to live in peace. They fear pain and early death. Even an ant avoids an obstacle that comes its way. 

Kindness need not be only a physical act. Children should be taught this noble quality from a very young age and made to understand how animals are hunted or slaughtered in the most inhuman way.

We should be ashamed that Sri Lanka which was once called the Dharma Dvipa has gone to the lowest depths of depravity.

The most cruelly-treated animal is the cartbull. After serving its master faithfully it ends up in the slaughter house! 

The cow, which supplies milk to us comes to a sorry end.

Let's not forget that centuries ago, King Buddhadasa built a hospital for animals and even performed surgery on a snake to remove a growth in its throat. Animals are not vicious. They attack and kill for survival. In contrast how unkind and cruel human beings can be. 

Ranjinie Chandaratne
Colombo 6.

Buyer beware!

When examined at home, I found one to be a polyester blended shirt. When I took it back to the store they refused to exchange it on the grounds that I had taken off the wrapping. 

The fact that I had been given a cheap polyester blended shirt instead of the costly cotton shirt did not bother them. Caveat Emptor (Buyer beware)

H .Gunaratne
Colombo

A toothache over 'failed' medics

Coming from a person who has much to say and do about policy matters on university admissions (and to the medical faculty in particular) it is sad that he has failed, over all these years, to see the result of the district quota system of admissions on the academic quality of the students admitted to the medical faculties. 

If Prof. Fonseka thinks that the students admitted to the state medical faculties are the cream of the student population who sat the A/L examination in the bio-science stream he is sadly mistaken. 

Some brilliant students do not enter the state universities due to the institutionalised ragging that takes place and if they can afford it go to foreign universities or in the alternative follow courses of professional studies in accountancy and management in Sri Lanka and obtain foreign qualifications.

Presumably, Prof. Fonseka has made this statement on the basis of students the A/L examination in the bioscience stream who receive one mark less than the cut-off mark for the medical faculty in that particular district being admitted to the dental faculty and similarly thereafter to the veterinary science and agriculture faculties. 

Under this scheme a student from the Colombo or Kandy district who obtains one mark less than the cut-off mark for that particular district is denied admission to the medical faculty, while students who score much less and are from the so-called backward districts like Anuradhapura, Badulla etc. are admitted to the medical faculty. 

It is a fact that a large number of students coming from the backward districts, particularly in the second attempt, do not study in the backward districts but in the cram shops in Colombo, Kandy and other provincial towns.

But by virtue of their registration as students from the backward districts, they gain admission to the faculty on much lower marks. They are generally academically sub-standard and account for a large percentage of the failures at the 2nd MB examination, while the students of Kandy and Colombo who are denied admission to the medical faculty being one mark short of the cut-off marks, are academically far superior and either enter the dental faculty or go elsewhere to other universities. 

In fact, Prof. Fonseka himself presiding at the convocation of the 6th batch of the North Colombo medical College held at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute hall stated that the quality of the graduates who had passed out from the NCMC (all of whom were medical rejects by his earlier definition) was very high and they had excelled in their chosen fields both in Sri Lanka and abroad.

As Prof. Fonseka is well aware, the standard of training and the facilities available are not the same at all the medical faculties. The training and facilities at the Colombo medical faculty are far superior to those at Sri Jayewardenapura. 

So much so that the Professor was in the forefront of the campaign resisting the grant of the MBBS Degree of the Colombo faculty to the NCMC graduates. 

In the circumstances, there have been instances of students selected for medicine at Sri Jayewardenapura opting to join the dental faculty instead.

Furthermore, in 1997/1998 the cut-off mark for admission to the dental faculty was higher than for medicine in the districts of Kalutara and Jaffna thereby showing that a fair number of students took to dentistry by choice and not as a result of being failed medics. 

A.O.R.Fernando
Kandy

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