Letters
View(s):It would be sensible to reduce the number of parliamentarians from 225 to a manageable figure – about 50. Do away with useless ministries. Sri Lanka is a financially hard-hit nation. Consider the massive wastage of resources of the tax payers. Apart from that the whole nation is caught up in a massive debt trap. Politicians are not a bit worried. They still continue shameful begging for more loans under the pretext of new projects. It seems some of the ministers are suffering from project mania. Projects are a lucrative business for these ministers. Billions of tax payers money spent on family cut outs of the Rajapaksa regime which are still to be seen in every nook and corner of Sri Lanka is a good example of how freely the country’s resources are being misused by selfish, foolish politicos.
For nearly 70 years since independence, and up to now, politicians have cheated the masses. They have brought disunity by establishing government by ‘Party System’. This is the root cause of all ills in Sri Lanka.
Another mistake is the adoption of Provincial Councils. Do away with these provincial councils. It is a big management cost to the nation. Grama Seva Niladaris can do better than corrupt councillors. Increase the number of Grama Niladaris in every area. Give them better facilities like office telephones, services of minor staff, and others. They personally know each and everybody in the area they work. They are only responsible to the respective Government Agents. Grama Seva Niladaris are respectful government servants. Never bending in two in front of political humbugs.
I feel that the democratic system of government is an utter failure in Sri Lanka. Where a majority of the nation is illiterate and poor, only political thugs are able to manipulate the majority of the people by promising them heaven and earth. Democracy will survive in a nation that has a high rate of literacy and impartiality. Or, else we should go back to a colonial form of government under the control of a singular Governor General. This is the wish of the law abiding public.
Wilson
Ambalangoda
Call of the Koha in Sydney and thoughts of homeland
One sound stood out from the beautiful dawn chorus in recent weeks and it puzzled me greatly: what on earth was a koha doing in Sydney? It is an unmistakable bird call.
Fortunately we journalists have reliable sources so I emailed my friend Malaka Rodrigo, the Sunday Times correspondent and member of the Field Ornithology Group of Sri Lanka, to ask if the koha migrates to Australia.
Malaka found that there is a Pacific or Australian koel (Eudynamys orientalis) that lives in the north of Australia but comes south in September-early October to breed. He sent a Youtube clip of this koel’s call showing how like the koha it sounds. Here, it’s known as the stormbird or the rainbird as it sings out more as stormy weather looms.
I didn’t hear the koha this morning so it might have flown back north again. What a shame – I loved hearing it and thinking of my homeland.
Dinoo Kelleghan
Sydney
Ships and legends: Another interesting titbit
Thank you for Richard Boyle’s piece on HMS Trincomalee. I have long been aware of the ship but the story of Eliza Blunt was new to me.
Richard makes a passing reference to which I like to add something. He says: “HMS Trincomalee arrived at St.Helena on the 24th where she stayed for six days leaving with an additional passenger, surgeon John Stokoe who had attended to Napoleon on the island.”
This was in 1818. Three years previously, in 1815, the first warship to be named HMS Ceylon, then refitted as a troopship, had accompanied the 74-gun HMS Northumberland which carried Napoleon to exile on St.Helena. Perhaps John Stokoe would also have gone to the island on that occasion.
It was because of the Napoleonic wars that the Dockyard at Trincomalee was taken over by the British who began the construction of a major facility to provide a base for war against the French in India. With the capture of Napoleon, construction came to a halt, and Trincomalee remained a backwater till the world wars of the 20th century.
The 20th century also saw the White Ensign of the Royal Navy lowered in Trincomalee for the last time. This was in 1957 and there were two naval ships in port: HMCys Vijaya of the Royal Ceylon Navy and the other was the flagship of the last RN Commander-in-Chief, East Indian Station, Vice Adm. Hilary Worthington Biggs C.B., D.S.O. (according to the nominal list at Navy House, Trincomalee). The flagship was the last HMS Ceylon.
Richard also says: “Frigates could not be built in England due to the plunder of oak tree forests for shipbuilding during the recent Napoleonic wars” and hence India-built teak ships were resorted to. This is not the whole story. Teak had proved a much superior wood than oak as oak’s acidity which led to the rusting of iron nails too fast. Portuguese, Dutch and French ships were constructed of teak in India. If I may quote of my sources:
“The India built ships traded with U.K. and between June and August, 20 such ships took rice from India and returned with cargoes. Then the English builders and owners protested. Before a select committee (1814) of the House of Commons (Chaired by Sir Robert Peel), John Hillman a builder expressed that India built ships will kill their industry. ‘An India built teak ship, after she had performed 6 cargoes is equal to one of ours after she has performed three’ ” [cf Gill, J.S. (1993) . Our Heritage of Traditional Boat Building. Journal of Marine Archaeology. 4. Goa. pp. 74-75]
Ships have always lent themselves to legend. I hope I have added a little to this story.
Somasiri Devendra
Via email
A tailpiece to ‘Nostalgic memories of KLM in the 50s’
I was both pleased and interested to read in this newspaper’s ‘Business Times’ on October 9, the article, ‘Nostalgic memories of KLM in the 1950s’ by D.L. Sirimanne, better known to my wife and me as ‘Uncle Siri’. His wife, ‘Aunty Olga’ to us (née Gunasekera; later Mrs. de Silva before marrying Mr. Sirimanne), also worked for Air Ceylon as one of the airline’s earliest stewardesses on domestic and regional services flown by Douglas DC-3 Dakota airplanes.
Mr. Sirimanne’s secondment by Dutch flag-carrier KLM, beyond his duties with Air Ceylon, has been described briefly in a book titled ‘Pilots Flying Logbook’ written and published in 1994 by Anders Rogberg, a former KLM pilot of Swedish nationality. The accompanying photo from Capt. Rogberg’s book depicts a dapper Don Lionel Sirimanne (at far left) with the crew of a KLM Douglas DC-6 airliner, doing a spot of sightseeing in Athens sometime in the 1950s.
In the early 1960s, Mr. Sirimanne was a crewmember of Air Ceylon’s Lockheed 188 Electra four-engine turboprop airliner (also leased from KLM) when it operated a one-off flight to Canton (now Guangzhou), China.
For the record, Air Ceylon operated two variants of the Lockheed Constellation triple-tail airliner leased from KLM, commencing in 1956 with the Model 749 Constellation. This was replaced by a larger and more modern Model 1049 Super Constellation (not ‘1011’ as stated in Mr. Sirimanne’s article) in 1958. The 749 ‘Connie’ was named ‘Mahadevi’ in Air Ceylon service while retaining its Dutch registration PH-LDP. The 1049 ‘Super Connie’ was named ‘Soma Devi’, and registered in Ceylon as 4R-ACH.
You don’t need to be an avid aviation enthusiast to tell the two types of ‘Connie’ apart. The 749 Constellation had round passenger windows (‘portholes’), while those on the 1049 Super Constellation, which also had wingtip supplementary fuel tanks as a further identification feature, were rectangular.
Roger Thiedeman
Melbourne, Australia
MPs, you don’t need incentives to serve your electorate
The headline read, “Incentives to Members of Parliament”. It confuses the average mind to think that members of parliament need to be offered incentives to work for the betterment of their electorate. At election time they vociferously pledged to work for the betterment of the living standards of the people. Then I ask the question, why do these members need incentives? It would do well for these members to recall the life of the former Singapore Prime Minister, who used public transport and set an example to his colleagues. It was this humble and selfless beginning that built Singapore to what it is today.
The monies to be spent on the luxury living envisaged by these incentives would be of more benefit to feed and clothe the millions who are destitute and homeless. The President and Prime Minister go from country to country seeking assistance to alleviate the suffering masses. Then why grant incentives to members, who of their own accord promised, the people of their electorate to develop their living conditions? These members made promises being well aware of the conditions of their electorate; in fact they did trudge those inaccessible areas without luxury vehicles: Hence they do not need incentives but love and dedication to develop a country.
It is a shame that these members of Parliament want to live in luxury while their own constituents live in misery, at times without basic essentials.
G. Abeyewickrema
Via email
There are a few who act, not just talk
Despite our political differences, we should appreciate a UNP MP from the south who organised a few bowsers of drinking water for the lakhs and lakhs of people who were suffering without water.
It is noteworthy to know that at least there are a few elected MPs who have some time for the under privileged, much in contrast to most of them who waste taxpayers’ money talking nonsense and doing nothing beneficial to the land.
Thirsty but grateful
Via email
Who’s getting arrears? Not us
Recently speaker Karu Jayasuriya was quoted in the media saying that payment of pension arrears to the Govt. servants who retired prior to 2006 have been restored and an increment of Rs. 3500 was being paid to them monthly now.
It is untrue. We are getting less than that amount. We entreat the relevant authorities to take prompt action to pay the rightful amount of arrears due, soon.
Robert Rajaguru
Colombo 3
The saga of the Journal of Hugh Boyd
The colonial history of Trincomalee has had many twists and turns. There were some great episodes when each of the great European mercantile powers, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Danes and British tried to wrest power and to occupy the Fort at Trincomalee. Last weekend in the Sunday Times Plus, Richard Boyle gave the readers a small facet of it when he described the fitting out of a naval vessel christened Trincomalee which played a role in the Anglo- French naval war in the seas off the coast of Trincomalee in 1782.
In the same year, Hugh Boyd, a British Civil officer serving in the Madras [Chennai] Government took it upon himself to make a secret mission to visit the Kandyan Court and negotiate to replace the Dutch East India Company under whom the maritime territories were and to replace them with the British. After an unsuccessful effort to convince the King of Kandy, he returned to Trincomalee Fort, which during that short period was occupied by the British who had out manoeuvred the Dutch.
In his journal Boyd left one of the finest descriptions of the Audience hall at the time of his visit and his meeting with the King and his courtiers. He describes the “long hall” almost covered with,
“A fine large carpet, the ceiling divided by arches that extended from side to side. Within the pillars were ranged the courtiers, sitting, in theirFashion, on their heels. The whole terminated in a large alcove, retired within which was a very high throne, and His Majesty seated on it with
Much solemnity. The removal of the curtain was the signal for our obeisance. “Mine, by stipulation, was to be only kneeling.”
The embassy took place during the American War of Independence, after which both French and then Dutch were the enemies of the British. On Boyd’s return to Trincomalee Fort from Kandy he found that the warship in which he was to have embarked and gone to Madras (Chennai) had already sailed from Trincomalee to bolster the main squadron under Sir Edward Hughes, who was fighting a series of stubborn engagements with the French Admiral Suffren.
This was a suicidal confrontation on both sides. Almost all the ships were derailed and many of the officers and men who manned both fleets lost their lives. It was such a horrendous naval skirmish that several of the marine artists in England and France commemorated the event by issuing oil paintings, engravings and chromo lithographs of this destructive event. One of the famous was the engraving by Dominic Serres (1722-1793), one of the leading marine artists and painter and founder member of the Royal Academy.
Boyd, who was not aware that the battle was imminent, chartered another trading vessel on April 10th and left for Madras. But, the next day the warship he had just boarded was sighted on the high seas by a fast enemy French warship La Fine under the command of Captain le Chevalier de la Come who gave chase and swiftly overhauled the British vessel. Capture was certain, so Boyd flung his journal overboard.
But the French by then had come alongside and immediately a sailor was sent overboard who fished the papers out of the water. The pages were soaked in salt water and much of the writing was illegible.
Years later the damaged journal was handed to the Dutch who were still holding the maritime territories. After the British took over the island the journal was preserved in the archives founded by the government and are now preserved in the Sri Lanka National Archives (Codex No. 3404).
The damaged Hugh Boyd Journal has been displayed in several exhibitions held at this institution.
- Ismeth Raheem
Colombo
Planting some seeds of thought before giving up agrochemicals
An article in the Sunday Times of September 11, stated that 80,000 farmers are to get aid to buy organic fertilizer which is to be made from cowdung, fish and sugarcane residues. The National Food Production (NFP) unit of the Presidential Secretariat is supposed to be initiating this activity. It is not known how much of this organic fertilizer is going to be applied per ha and the subsidy.
It is good to apply organic fertilizers but there are some issues which this unit needs to give consideration. N, P and K are some of the major nutrients essential for plant growth. Plants remove these nutrients from soil and if we are to maintain the fertility of the soil these nutrients have to be replaced. Cowdung, fish and sugarcane residues have negligible amounts of N, P and K and cannot completely replace those absorbed by plants. Further, the nutrients present in these materials take 2-3 weeks or even more to be available to plants. Cowdung has a high concentration of heavy metals such as cadmium, arsenic, lead etc. which may be toxic. The National Food Production unit needs to give attention to these facts.
I presume that the main objective of the NFP unit is to promote production of poison-less food. This is a very good move. However those in this unit need to see that water polluted with toxic compounds is not allowed to enter irrigation water sources which may indirectly increase the poison level in plants. All Pesticides are toxic compounds. Toxicity is indicated by what is called LD 50 values. Pesticides we use are of high LD 50 values and are of less toxicity. Insecticides and mosquito coils which we use to control household pests also contain toxic compounds but their LD values are very high. Further the pesticides commonly used are not recalcitrant and hence are decomposed in a short time.
Although fertilizers (Fs) such as urea and TSP and synthetic pesticides (P) were not used a few decades ago, the biotic environment including the level of the fertility of soils is not the same as was in the past, resulting in the need to use these Fs and Ps. New varieties of pests (insects, fungi, bacteria etc.) keep on developing and unless these are effectively controlled, there could be food shortages. At present there may be a few plots cultivated without Fs and Ps using modified/different agronomic/spiritual methods. It is necessary to find out how effective these methods are. If they are effective, the researchers of the Dept. of Agriculture need to make recommendations based on their findings.
It is also necessary that Integrated Pest Management (IPM) methods are developed and applied so that we could give up the use of synthetic toxic chemicals to control pests. In countries such as India, pests are controlled mostly using IPM, but not in Sri Lanka. Bio-fertilizers (blue green algae, rhizobia etc.) and bio-pesticides (such as those made from neem) are good alternatives to fertilizers and toxic pesticides respectively but are not used in large scale. The Department of Agriculture needs to develop and promote the use of such bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides if we are to give up the use of agrochemicals.
Dr. C.S. Weeraratna
Via email
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