Letters to the Editor
View(s):Genesis of “state-owned” land and the continuing waste of commercially viable areas
There have been references to state-owned land in the current Budget. I wonder whether the present generation is aware of the genesis of the bulk of these lands.
In the 50’s we had a flourishing export economy entirely due to the estate sector. In the 70’s the Socialist government of Mrs. Bandaranaike resorted to a “land-grab” limiting ownership of estates to 50 acres per individual. A few owners had the know-how and possibly helped by political influence converted their ownership into companies and retained their estates. The rest were swallowed up by the Land Reform Commission (LRC). It is astonishing that the far-reaching consequences of this move were not assessed ahead and a feasible plan outlined for the development of the land thus acquired. It appears that this “state-owned land” continues to function as a “white elephant”.
Several years after the government acquisition of these estates in the ’90’s the late President Premadasa distributed some of these lands to the landless via the ‘Swarnabhoomi’ deeds. Each householder was given an acre of land, resulting in the creation of the tea smallholder.
In one particular instance, around 20 % of land of a tea estate in Deltota was thus distributed. The rest of the estate has been taken over by the jungle! Presumably this scenario would have been repeated many times.
What a waste of commercially viable arable land!
This single action resorted to without sufficient planning, had and continues to have a disastrous effect on our economy. Incidentally the compensation paid for rubber estates, many years later, was in the region of Rs. 1,000 per acre!
Dr. P. Amerasinghe Nawala
Good move to make English accessible to all classes
It was heartening to read that the Minister of Education has decided to give English a big push in Sri Lanka schools.
The history of English in Lanka, that it came through being colonised had social relevance at that time, but today has lost that association because it has become a world language.
English originating from Germanic tribes, influenced by Latin and Greek and European languages through the Norman invasion of 1066 was like all languages progressively invented. Through the historical fact of the British founding of the United States of America, the world impact spread the language both for physical sciences and social sciences as well as world trade and political communication between nation states.
English has acquired some similarity to maths in its universality and its independence from cultures as Indian English today demonstrates.
To be a little desultory, unlike a language Mathematics, did not originate in any culture but was in nature before human existence. Humans discovered its existence.
Einstein’s E = mc2 is the world’s most famous equation, Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. On the most basic level, the equation says that energy and mass (matter) are interchangeable; they are different forms of the same thing. This physical relationship existed in nature before Einstein, before any human. What Einstein did was to discover what existed in nature and give it a formal equation. The spiral arrangements of leaves on a stem, and the number of petals, and spirals in flower heads during the development of most plants, represent successive numbers in the famous series discovered in the thirteenth century by the Italian mathematician Fibonacci, in which each number is the sum of the previous.
English cannot aspire to this universality, independence from cultures, because it is man-made, not discovered in nature. So, it, unlike maths, will show cultural variation. However, this will not be significant enough to become separate languages in different cultures.
To conclude, the Sinhala Only Act was in 1956, the same year as Ediriwira Sarachchandra’s Maname which was entirely in Sinhala without being Sinhala only. This world class classic was infused with Greek, Japanese and other traditions because its creator accessed these with knowledge of the English language.
And Sarachchandra is not the only one. The Sinhalese, Tamils, Moors and Malays, not to mention the transitory Burghers, like Ludowyk, Keuneman and others who did so in science, the arts and social development, using English, are too numerous to mention. However, all of them came from the privileged middle classes.
May Minister Premajayantha’s mission make it accessible to all classes.
Ernest Mcintyre Via email
Redress injustice done to these pensioners
In order to prune the number of public servants, the government at the time offered special considerations to those public servants who opt to retire in keeping with the Public Adminstration Circular No. 44/90 of 18. 10. 1990. The circular speaks for itself about the concessions offered.
A public servant who had completed 20 years had been offered 90% of his last drawn salary as monthly pension as per paragraph 3 of the said circular as a special concession. This would mean that he is entitled to all the benefits of a public servant who retires reaching 60 years of age. However, quite unfortunately, the Department of Pensions had completely ignored the instructions of the said circular when calculating our pension anomalies, both in 2015 and 2019, thus depriving us of our actual dues causing a great injustice.
The yardstick adopted in calculating pension anomalies of those who have retired reaching the age of 60 with 30 years service should have been followed, giving the special concession granted to them by the said circular but this has not been done.
Our appeals to the Director of Pensions, individually and collectively and through pensioners’ associations have brought no relief. Sadly a good number of those who retired under this circular have already passed away.
We appeal to the Prime Minister who is also the Minister of Public Administration and his able Ministry Secretary to look into our grievances and grant us some redress so that our longstanding and legitimate dues are paid to us.
Affected pensioners Colombo
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