Letters
View(s):Mr. President, focus on pledges, not party politics
On January 8, some 6.2 million people voted for Maithripala Sirisena the common candidate in the belief that he would work towards a ‘stable country’ and fulfil 100 things in 100 days – but would not head the SLFP or lead the UPFA in elections.
What is happening now is that the President’s valuable time is spent on attending to issues involving the SLFP/UPFA. He has little time to focus on pledges he and his team made during the presidential campaign.
Therefore, we appeal to the President to discontinue party politics and concentrate on what the people expected from you – a ‘stable country’. Else they may feel that you also disappointed or cheated them.
K.U. Pushpakumara
Pitakotte
Love Sri Lanka, love its people!
This letter is addressed to all Sri Lankans who genuinely love the country and its people. Our people have a problem in trusting and loving one another! This is the root cause of our problems. To solve these problems, we have to change our way of thinking and mentality.
If parents teach love, respect and self-esteem to their children, the rate of suicide will also come down! In other words, respect and love your life first, and then love and respect other Sri Lankans.
Sadly we tend to believe that things foreign are better than things Sri Lankan and white-skinned people are better than us. Look at advertisements of leading clothes stores or jewellery stores. Most of them feature foreign models instead of our beautiful damsels. Even Indian models are considered superior to our models!
In our beauty pageants, too, the winner is mostly fair skinned! We simply do not appreciate our complexion! This is foolish as non-whites have won international beauty pageants. We only have to teach our girls self-esteem and not to speak with a foreign accent, but just to be ourselves with a love for our culture!
In most families where one of the spouses is foreign, the local spouse speaks to the kids in the language of the foreign spouse. By not speaking in Sinhala or Tamil, the children are deprived of speaking their mother tongue.
When one goes to a hotel or restaurant, the foreigners are given preference. Hotel managers should be told that they must serve people on the first-come-first-serve basis.
Lankans, wake up! Let us change the way of our thinking and appreciate ourselves… When we travel to western countries, on most occasions, we are looked down upon, and when we come to our country, our own people do not respect each other! Let us try to change this sad situation!
A Patriot
Why give special treatment for protesting MPs?
Some opposition MPs launched a protest campaign in the well of the House, demanding the withdrawal of bribery charges against former President Mahinda Rajapaksa.
A television channel reported that they were well looked after with food and beverages and even provided medical facilities.
Other people who launch demonstrations and protest campaigns should also be treated in the same manner without being fired upon with teargas or water cannon.
Readers may recall how the previous regime treated the Rathupaswala residents who staged demonstrations demanding clean drinking water. The Welikada prisoners who had launched a protest campaign were brutally killed. Why these different types of treatment?
W.G. Chandrapala
Via email
Currency chaos in many colours and sizes
Our currency notes are of complicated sizes and colours and they cause much inconvenience to the people, especially the old and the partially blind.
The Rs. 5,000 note is smaller than the Rs. 2,000 and Rs. 1,000 notes. The Rs. 1000 note comes in various hues and sizes and it is easy to mistake a Rs. 500 note for a Rs. 20 note because of the similar colour.
We often hear people complaining of giving the wrong denomination note because of the similar colour and size.
I can think of no plausible reason for this anomaly.
Why this kalabala? Why not streamline the sizes and colours? Have only one size and one colour for one particular denomination and let the larger denomination notes be larger or vice-versa. Let the colours be distinct so that the identification will be easy.
Even the coins can be streamlined. The sizes should be in the order of the denomination – the smallest being the 50 cent coin and the largest the 5 rupee coin.
People have enough problems on their plates without having to handle unnecessary ones. The new Government is doing many changes to make the lives of people easier and let them do one more — on sizes and colours of the currency notes and coins. Certainly people will appreciate it.
Dr. Mareena Thaha Reffai
Dehiwela
Yala National Park: No toilets; go to the bush
Patanangala is one of the two resting places inside the Yala National Park for visitors to have a snack. The other is on the bank of Menik Ganga. On Sunday April 19 between 8.30 a.m. and 9.15 a.m., there were more than 26 vehicles at the Patanangala rest. Visitors, including foreign tourists, had come there for breakfast. 
There was not a toilet for visitors. They had to go to the nearby jungle to relieve themselves. As it had rained the previous night the area was like a pool of mud. Even women were forced to go to the bush. There was no privacy; no water.
I cannot understand why the officials who started this site could not think of building toilets at these rests.
I appeal to the authorities to build toilets and charge a nominal fee from visitors, if necessary!
NJ
Via email
Who knows what Lane Discipline is?
This refers to the news item headlined “Strict enforcement of road traffic regulations soon” (The Sunday Times of 12-04-2015).
The term “lane discipline” (LD) was hardly known in Sri Lanka and its usage began only on my return from Singapore after a WHO Fellowship training in 1988. With two years prior driving experience in Britain and the training just completed, I was confident that the only solution to the problems prevailing on our roads was the need to introduce lane discipline the proper way with correct road markings and road signs and trained drivers as practised in Britain, Singapore and Japan.
Two seminars and exhibitions through the now defunct NCPA on the subject “Introduction to the Basics of Lane Discipline” were held in 2000 and 2003 at the OPA. The basic principles were demonstrated using physical model 16’x8’ giving necessary details.
The Minister of Health was the Chief Guest while the WHO Resident Representative, Dr Peter Hybsier, was Guest of Honour at the first seminar.
In the second presentation, a pilot project was proposed on Parliament Road with leaflets designed to educate drivers covering the basic rules in both languages for five different categories of vehicles and drivers. Sadly both traffic police and RDA representatives were conspicuous by their absence at both exhibitions.
Expecting lane discipline to be understood by motorists by ad hoc, trial and error, half baked methods through the media is a futile experiment. This has to start from the Highway Code. In Singapore a separate organisation run by the Honda Company of Japan and the Singapore Government called the SSDC (Singapore Safe Driving Centre) does the training (theory and practice) before a driver is allowed to use the main roads.
According to the information given by the media it is difficult to imagine what problems will arise during peak hours if a bus enters the bus bay to pick up passengers, unable to re-enter the left lane. A similar scene can be expected in the outer lane with hundreds of motorcycles driven at varying speeds in butterfly fashion, and the inevitable confusion at a junction or a roundabout… Hopefully this method will be successful–it can be called a “Hybrid LD System” unique to Sri Lanka and not seen anywhere else in the world…
This letter is written with no malice to anyone except expressing my sadness about the plight of the untrained motorists and road users clueless about lane discipline.
Eng. Anton Nanayakkara Battaramulle
John Still was among the ill-fated troops in Gallipoli
April 25, 2015 marked the centenary of the defeat of a British [Australian /New Zealand] army by the Turkish Army at Gallipoli. Inexplicably, these two former colonies yet “celebrate” this rout as Anzac Day! Interestingly, Turkey does not seem to bother celebrating its victory over the British Army.
What is little known is that volunteer soldiers from Ceylon (planters and public school cadets) were also among these ill-fated troops. What is even less known is that John Still (author of the incomparable Jungle Tide) was in this army and survived as a Turkish prisoner of war for many months. Eventually released, he went on to publish a collection of poems titled [as far as I can remember] Poems in Captivity. I read these poems seven decades ago as a schoolboy in Kandy. I wonder whether any copy is yet around?
Tissa Devendra
Via email
Get this into your head and say ‘no’ to open-face helmet
This is in response to the motorcyclist who wrote to the Editor of the Sunday Times on April 12, 2015.
I am quite surprised that you had chosen to say “No” to the full-face helmet. You said you removed the plastic visor of the helmet because your friend lost his eyesight. It is my duty to let you know that open-face helmet visors pose a greater threat than full-face helmet visors. A visor in a full-face helmet is by design stronger and less dangerous than the visor in an open-face helmet.
Visors are prohibited on open-face helmets in many parts of the world for this reason, while they are allowed in full face helmets because the visor is supported on all four sides during an impact. I agree, half face/open face helmet users must be forced to remove their visors and selling them should also be banned. If a rider wishes to have visors, he must opt for a full face where international studies have concluded that it is safe to have a visor.
Secondly, you claim that you have come across helmets that have chin guards that cover 75% of a rider’s face. Not a single helmet sold in Sri Lanka had 75% face coverage, unless someone imported an Iron Man movie helmet and decided to wear it. Almost all motorcycle helmets have a maximum of 40% coverage via the chin guard.
Thirdly, I agree that tinted visors should be banned, but why are we talking only about the motorcyclists? Tinted, UV protection coated, gradation tinted, auto-tinting, front windscreens should also be totally banned from motor vehicles.
Fourthly, you link full face helmets with bank robberies and crime. Please understand that motorcycle riders did not ask banks to have easily breakable glass walls and doors. Nor did anybody ask them to obtain untrained security personnel. Many robberies have been conducted using open face helmets with criminals covering their faces with handkerchiefs. The educated people of this country understand that for a criminal, the full-face helmet is an easily replaceable gear, but it is an irreplaceable safety tool for a motorcyclist.
Facial recognition on whatever vehicle is not the primary means of identification, if it was so, we won’t need a National Identity Card. Number plates are considered the primary means of identification. Yet today, given that there are so many fake number plates on vehicles, and stolen vehicles, it is true that the law enforcement is unable to trust the number plate. A solution is really simple. If the revenue licence issued every year contains the make, the model and the Chassis number of the vehicle, routine roadside checks on vehicles can restore trust in the primary method of identification.
If at all you are a motorcyclist who seeks safety on these unforgiving roads, say “No”. Say “No” to the open-face helmet.
Chirantha R. Anthony Amerasinghe
Moratuwa
| Full-face helmets only way to safeguard face and head Isn’t there a better way of preventing murders, thefts and robberies than banning the use of full–face helmets by motorcycle riders? The ban will not deter a criminal, because he could still use an ordinary helmet and cover his face with a piece of cloth or wear a pair of sun-glasses. I heard a doctor say on a TV channel a few weeks ago that a full-face helmet was the only gear that would prevent damage to the face and the head during accidents, but a normal helmet would only protect the head. Therefore, I hope the authorities would give due thought to this issue and decide not to implement the ban on full-face helmets. To prevent robberies, banks should recruit retired armed service personnel as security officers and provide them guns. Even seeing such personnel in uniforms will make the culprits jittery and this would be a better alternative, than making the motorcyclist vulnerable to harm. The security guards employed at many places are mostly senior citizens who work for long shifts. I hope more people would voice their views in favour or against my suggestions. G. Eric Muscreen |