Recently I had to go to the Land Registry office at Delkanda, Colombo district. My initial observation was that the facilities were underused. What irked me most was that there was no proper desk provided to sit at and fill up the application forms obtained from here.
The other inconvenience was that I had to pant my way up to the third floor using the stairs. At the ground floor directing one to the Land Registry is a sign with an arrow to the staircase. In fact there is a lift fully operational on the opposite side in an obscure corner invisible to people entering through the main entrance. All you could see is a gray door so easily mistaken for a toilet door because the lift switches cannot be seen.
Outside the three-storey building called some “Plaza” there is no board to announce the presence of the Land Registry within. The car park can be used by people who have no business in the building at all!
Coming back to the service within the office, the size of the single desk provided for filling forms is 3 feet by 1 ½ feet- hardly enough to place one’s documents. One bends into half, blocking the way, to write, since the desk is below waist height.
On good thing is that the lady officer who issues the forms and accepts the filled up form is pleasant and helpful. But there is no place to fill up forms. None of those sitting in the rooms help. My request to a lady in a room just opposite the record room, to use one of the unoccupied desks was refused.
I noticed a lawyer sitting in one of the comfortable chairs lining the passage, filling forms struggling with her ink pad and rubber stamp. She was using a thick file as her table. Only half the rubber stamp she placed got imprinted. I asked her; don’t you get a table to write? Embarrassed she said no.
Finally I reached the far end of the office where in a passage I found an abandoned wooden shelf which was the right height to stand and write. While I was doing so a cleaning woman tried to chase me away. I told her she could inform the head of branch and also call the police if she wanted to.
One week later I came to collect the certified copies of the deeds I wanted. I was asked to speak to a certain officer at the far end of the building. I was told to wait for him to return from lunch. It was 2.30 p.m. and I had already inquired three times if he was back. Finally I found out that he was on leave. In fact someone else readily found the deed copies and gave them to me.
One does not have to go to the head of the division to get simple instructions. On my first visit when I asked about procedure from a lady officer she quickly said it is a lawyer who has to fill the forms. The forms clearly indicate that the owner of the property can do it himself.
People need not incur unwanted expense. Our literacy rate is good and we did not get free education to run to lawyers for all the little things we have to do.
In conclusion I would say:
- Please have a name board outside the building.
- Install a sign board pointing to the lift.
- Stop the car park being used by people who have no business in the building.
- Perhaps charge a parking fee.
- Set up a small stamp selling stall on the 3rd floor.
- Lastly bring the abandoned shelf seen at the back of the office for use as a place to fill in forms
There is ample space just outside the office for counters to be made for people to stand and write.
Disappointed
Via email
Faith, Science and The God Delusion of Dawkins
Reading Smriti Daniel's interview with Richard Dawkins in last Sunday's issue (January 22) of the Sunday Times, prompted me to re-visit Dawkins' most popular and most controversial bookThe God Delusion. The book was a gift to me from a youthful friend abroad, and on the front fly-leaf I read, "Dearest Uncle Father, I haven't read it yet but will get to it. I want to know what you think". So this will be in part a response to that request.
The God Delusion has been a hugely popular book ever since its publication in 2006. It is an outright and aggressive attack on religious belief, particularly Christian theistic belief, offering atheistic materialism as a more meaningful alternative.
It is certainly a palatable dish for the humanistic materialism widely prevalent in the West, and the dressing with which Dawkins presents it is very tempting; the populist, almost flamboyant, presentation is very mind-catching. But the critical question is, what is the substance behind the dressing, behind the attractive, appealing wrapping.
It is not difficult for an intelligent reader to discover, in a careful reading, that many of Dawkins' arguments against religion and for atheism as an alternative, do not hold water. In fact the eminent Oxford mathematician John Lennox went so far as to say that The God Delusion has strengthened his faith, such was the weakness of its arguments, in a debate with Dawkins at Oxford University's Museum of Natural History, in October 2008.
The book has also provoked a number of refutational responses from well-known philosophers, theologians and scientists. I will list some of them: 1. Faith and its Critics: a Conversation, by David Fergusson (2) Darwin's Angel by John Cornwell (3) The Dawkins Delusion: Atheist Fundamentalisms and the Denial of the Divine, by Alister McGrath and Joanna McGrath (4)Why There Almost Certainly Is a God by Keith Wardand, (5) Reason, Faith and Revolution, by Terry Eagleton.
Though there are differences of emphases in the critiques of the book by the above-mentioned authors, all of them agree: that there are distortions and misrepresentations of faith and religious beliefs, unpardonable in a man of his scientific credentials; that this "straw man" approach facilitates his purpose of rubbishing religion but at the expense of philosophical rigour. Terry Eagleton, for example, began a review of The God Delusion in the London Review of Books, thus, "Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on Theology".
Other reviewers too find Dawkins' understanding of religion extremely inadequate. They also point to his specious arguments to "prove" that the methodology of science must necessarily lead to atheism.
Dawkins himself surely knows dozens, if not hundreds, of respected top flight scientists who are believers and church-goers. William D. Phillips, the co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics writing on the subject of "Science, Religion and Reality" says, "There is a pervasive myth in our society that being a scientist is incompatible with being a person of faith. It simply isn't true. Most of the physicists I know are persons of faith, and most of these people are quite conventional in both their science and in their understanding of their faith. So what is all the fuss about?"
The selective and partisan use of both theological and scientific scholarship is another weakness of The God Delusion. Dawkins' arguments carry force not so much through unbiased and dispassionate analysis as by the use of forceful rhetoric. And with regard to the citation of sources it is curious that, in a supposedly scientific work, the authority most cited by Dawkins is Dawkins himself, as John Cornwell points out.
McGrath, an Oxford academician like Dawkins, is forthright in his rebuttal: that Dawkins has abandoned even the pretence of rigorous evidence-based scholarship for anecdotal arguments, quotations taken out of context, discarding any serious engagement with primary sources. It is more a propaganda tract than a credible defence of atheism. As such it is hard to discount the impression, as McGrath says, that The God Delusion is more designed to reassure atheists whose faith is faltering than to engage fairly or rigorously with religious believers or others seeking after truth. The book has undoubtedly achieved that objective.
Fr. Mervyn Fernando
Via email
Sweet 'Freedom Day'
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T'was 4th February 1948
The day was sunny bright
Now, I feel it a blessing
To have seen
That great day in history
Our childhood sweet memory!
Ceylon was granted 'Freedom'
After 150 years of British rule
After 500 years of foreign rule
Thus giving birth to party-politics,
T'was grand celebration
With the Esplanade and ramparts
Filled with jubilant crowds
All town-schoolchildren
Proudly and smartly marched
In that historical parade
In the Galle Esplanade,
Now Cricket Stadium.
The Bo-leaf-green flat
Shone in our School-Captain's hands
Behind her along
Her eight-year-old
Fair youngest sister
Like a little commander
Caught many eyes!
With their two sisters
In the middle rows
Twins and I in the first row
All marched in pride
In our fresh green ties
In that epoch-beginning day!
Decades have rolled
Times have changed
The old foe has turned a friend.
Yet we can't forget
Our early 'Freedom Fighters"
Or our 'National Heroes'
Who were hanged or shot
As rebels, by the British,
To them our grateful tribute!
Though some see today
As 'neo-colonialism'
There's great development
In education and many fields
In the 'Post-Independence' era
Even with a war of 30 years!
The old 'Great Britain' now U.K.
Has become indispensable
To old 'Ceylon' now Sri Lanka.
Now it's like next-door
To many Sri Lankans
Who often go there
For studies, sports, seminars
And a thousand other matters.
Some are British citizens
Risen to great heights
Doing Mother Lanka proud!
On this 64th anniversary
Let us pay grateful tribute
To all 'sons of the soil'
Of the Tri-Forces and the Police
Who laid down their lives
In the gruesome 30-year war
To save our Mother Lanka
From blood-thirsty terrorists!
Even the civilians
Who were tortured to death
Deserve our sympathy and honour!
On this immemorial day
Let us pray
For a peaceful future
With all communities standing
Under one banner smiling!
Anon,
Galle
Living in hope or leaving in hordes
Why is everyone trying to leave the "Miracle of Asia"? Boat loads of people are arrested for leaving the country. Almost one member of many households has already left, mostly to Australia.
People are leaving the paradise island like rats leaving a sinking ship. Why….?
I would think it is because of thuggery, intimidation, corruption and harassment as if there is no law and order.
The authorities who maintain law and order have failed miserably in their duties and many honest people are silent or have become mere "Yes" men.
Those of us who stay on live purely on hope and faith. Hoping for a tomorrow where we can live without fear and burdens heaped on us with taxes and the cost of living soaring high.
Sunil R. Wickremeratne,
Mathugama |
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