Letters
View(s):Act before a tragedy happens at Navinna railway crossing
Residents of Railway Avenue at Navinna (off Highlevel Road end) are grateful to the authorities for renovating the road some months ago. The railway crossing section was also properly done and vehicles passed smoothly without getting stuck.
However, a problem has arisen at the elevated level crossing. The tarred road on either side of the rail tracks (at the crossing) has cracked, bringing out the stones at the bottom and creating gaping gaps between the track and the road. As a result, cars and three wheelers find it difficult to pass the crossing which is on an incline.
The residents urge railway authorities to repair this level crossing on an urgent basis before a tragedy occurs.
G.A. A. Wijeratne
Via email
Pedestrian crossings: Yellow or white?
Reader Anton Nanayakkara says manslaughter on the highway goes on unabated in spite of efforts by the powers that be to minimise it. That is true.
It is in this context, a proposal by a “key official” to use white paint in place of yellow on pedestrian crossings is most disturbing and foolhardy. It is a well-known fact that of all the colours, the eye is most responsive to yellow. This is the reason why it is used on pedestrian crossings. When the eye notices a change in the colour in the markings on the road surface, it pays immediate attention and alerts the driver to this. This is the scientific reasoning for the selection of yellow, I believe.
GPJ
Nawala
Desilting done in scientific manner is economically advantageous
The letter by Eng. Nissanka de Silva in the Sunday Times of August 3 titled ‘Dangers of unmonitored de-silting of tank beds’ as known to him in the 1970s is both educative and timely in terms of pitfalls when pursued unscientifically.
It was only on August 4 that TV news at 7 p.m. showed how desilting was being carried out under the supervision of a certain Divisional Secretary using manual labour minus the necessary implements to be paid for in kind for five hours work daily. This method as shown and openly resisted by the poor people is sure to end up with a bigger problem of accelerated erosion defeating the very purpose of desilting.
The heavily silted Thalangama tank
The above made me recall a seminar I held at the OPA on November 20, 1997 on the same subject when the word desilting was taboo in the Irrigation Department and a punishable offence if undertaken. The seminar was supported by two other speakers, Dr. M.U.A. Tennakone from the Mahaweli and Eng. Navaratna from the Agrarian Services Department. Our joint effort was to try and dispel the wrong opinion about desilting as totally uneconomical.
At this stage I recall how I secretly agreed with late Ranjan Wijeratne who was then Chairman, Agricultural Development Authority by undertaking to desilt three tanks in the Jaela area – Kadurugaswewa, Peralanda and Ihalagama at a small cost of Rs. 100,000 each, depositing the silt removed within the tank bed itself to reduce cost. This helped the farmers of this area immediately.
In my presentation I quoted a study done by the Irrigation Department on Kekanadura tank down south by scientifically analysing at different levels the presence of stable isotope called Caesium 137 which first appeared in the global environment in 1954 due to a fallout from a nuclear testing programme. This study revealed that the actual siltation rate was three times what we thought it was- showing the gravity of the problem.
My analysis was based on a hypothetical tank of 1000 ac.ft capacity, 200 ac water spread area, 200 ac irrigable area and loss of capacity due to siltation as 25%. The cost of desilting was worked out on the assumption that desilting was done using machinery. The depth of excavation was to be based on the original tank bed survey contours.
The main thrust of my presentation was to identify all of the benefits, direct, indirect, intangible, all converted to financial terms as best as possible in a hypothetical exercise.
The excavated material which is highly fertile was also given a value in land reclamation and the resulting benefits from land so reclaimed depending on the purpose of reclamation also taken into account. Use of silt to restore eroded areas of the tank catchment, where the soil was clayey for use in brick making, ability to cultivate both seasons, value of the added new capacity of the tank, benefits from inland fisheries, demand from landscape architects to use silt in their designs to enhance and beautify the environment were others.
With all these assumptions we arrived at an unbelievable benefit cost ratio of 18.Even if this figure is divided by 10 it is still profitable to engage in desilting practices and it is my prayer that the Irrigation Department will undertake a systematic and scientific programme to desilt all of the tanks under the Department giving priority to the worst affected areas.
Seen above is a photograph of the heavily silted Thalangama tank of the Irrigation Department in Battaramulla where I live.
Eng. Anton Nanayakkara
Senior Deputy Director of Irrigation
(retd)
Control Hamas to prevent the next Gaza War
There have now been three wars between Gaza and Israel in the past six years. If nothing is done to stop the protagonist — the Islamic resistance army more commonly known as Hamas — then the only certain future for the area is that there will be another war in the not too distant future.
While many world leaders recognise the necessity of eliminating Hamas — both for the benefit of Israel and for the Palestinian civilians who suffer both directly and indirectly from the decisions made by Hamas – only few have the foresight to accomplish this task.
The Palestinian authority does not have the will or the capability to eradicate Hamas. The Arabs cannot be trusted to do it — with the possible exception of Egypt, which has been destroying terror tunnels in Gaza, enforcing a blockade to stop terror supplies reaching Hamas, and has thwarted an Islamic suicide bomber terror attack and rocket attacks aimed at Israeli civilians in the past month.
Israel has the capability to get rid of Hamas, but the world accuses Israel of being too brutal in doing it. Western countries that could do it know full well that if they were to do it that they would behave as ‘brutally’ as they accuse Israel of in the face of Islamic terrorists using civilian human shields, and they would have to come to terms with their hypocritical stance towards Israel. Western countries also have no appetite to fight any Islamic terrorist group — especially one playing hostage to a civilian population.
While it is, sadly, abundantly clear that while the world is not actually prepared to do what is needed to stop the conflict reoccurring, the Western world does have some control. Funds given to the Palestinians should be strictly controlled. Without funds the terror trade of Hamas will die, even though the ideology of course will not. Perhaps this is the best solution that the Western world is prepared to fathom for now.
Michelle Moshelian
Givatayim
Israel
Compare Israel – not Hamas – with the LTTE
I was more than disappointed when I read the Sunday Times (August 3, 2014) editorial which compares Hamas with the now vanquished LTTE and suggests that Hamas too is a terrorist organisation – just as Israel and its backers in the West, the so-called international community, want the rest of the world to believe.
Hamas was democratically elected in an election that was certified by former US President Jimmy Carter, as ‘free and fair’. If the people’s will is the defining term in a democracy, as we hear so often, then the world must accept Hamas as an elected body and if necessary in times of oppression and slaughter, support them when they offer legitimate resistance which is permitted under international law, the same way the world supported the French Resistance Movement in its struggle against German occupation
But the world, especially the so-called ‘international community’, makes fish of one and fowl of another. The Nazis dubbed the French Resistance fighters as ‘terrorists’ but the world supported them, quite rightly, as a legitimate resistance to Germany’s occupation of their country.
We all know the western powers supported the white supremacist regime of South Africa. Former US vice president Dick Cheney had told F. W. de Klerk not to release the ‘terrorist’ Mandela from Robben Island and Margaret Thatcher along with the likes of Ronald Reagan had called apartheid South Africa an outpost of western civilisation. The same is being said of Israel.
Israel is also an occupying power and its crimes against a helpless and unarmed population must be associated with the crimes the Germans committed against the European Jewish population. Today, the children of these very Jews are committing the same dastardly crimes against the Palestinians, prompting the Palestinian intellectual Edward Said to lament that ‘we are the victims of the victims’. The creation of Israel, no less drenched in the blood of the Palestinians, is in itself another matter better left for another day.
My disappointment rests largely in the belief that all the editorialists at the Sunday Times are well acquainted with the actual facts yet twist or distort them to suit a new ‘see no evil, hear no evil speak no evil’ approach to the Palestinian catastrophe.
Till this day, Israel remains the only country without defined borders and yet we hear no condemnation of that. All we hear is the Israeli narrative that Hamas fired rockets into Israel without ever mentioning the siege or the blockade that Israel had imposed in the open air concentration camp that it created in Gaza with a little bit of help from the old and now the new tyrant of Egypt Abdel Fateh al-Sisi.
Hameed Abdul Karim
Via e-mail