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| Sripathi
another Rasputin, say SLFP district organisers The SLFP organizers from Gampaha including Parliamentarians Felix Perera, Neil Rupasinghe and Sarath Gunaratne had accused Sripathi Sooriyarachchi of trying to create division among party members especially by trying to encroach on areas demarcated for other organizers in their respective electorates. The verbal exchange had almost culminated in violence, but the timely intervention of the Opposition Leader helped defuse the situation. This has resulted in the Gampaha District SLFP organizers banding together to complain to the President against Mr. Sooriyarachchi. A senior Gampaha district organizer told the Sunday Times that he is like Rusputin conspiring to divide the party having earlier attacked the Opposition Leader Mahinda Rajapakse and Jeyaraj Fernandopulle and this trend was getting out of hand. The senior organiser said that President Kumaratunga was unaware of incidents of corruption concerning Mr. Sooriyaarachchi and said they were now gathering evidence against Sripathi Sooriyarachchi which they intend conveying to the President. New
Authority with teeth to better manage natural disasters
The existing NDMC functioning under the Social Services Ministry with a skeleton staff of three must be restructured and reactivated as the DIMMA with wide-ranging powers to obtain the effective participation of all relevant organizations, Engineer D.P. Mallawaaratchchi, a consultant at the Roads Development Authority said on Thursday. The IESL is pressing the government to consider its proposal presented earlier this month, which they stress, will put in place an efficient mechanism to mitigate and better manage disasters. "The current institutional arrangements to mitigate and manage disaster on the scale of the country's recent experience were totally inadequate," Mr. Mallawaratchchi pointed out. He said the
NDMC and other agencies, are not geared to execute them in a coordinated
and streamlined manner. He held the institutional weaknesses responsible
for the impact on the lives and future of more than 163,000 families.
The NDMC came
into existence in 1996 and comes under the purview of the President.
Although it was established for prevention, mitigation and planning
of disaster management, the Centre only focused on the provision
of relief, the IESL said. Mr. Mallawaratchchi
said the Government should scrap the Sri Lanka Disaster Counter
Measures Bill and the National Disaster Management Plan and bring
in its place the proposed National Disaster Mitigation and Management
Authority Bill. Haphazard development in disaster prone areas, non-engineered construction practices and improper land use has contributed to triggering or accelerating disasters in vulnerable areas. Therefore, the IESL said, it was vital that an institution with authority and necessary legislative powers to control wrong practices, prevent and mitigate disaster etc. is set up. Mr. Mallawaratchchi
said that Minister Karu Jayasuriya who heads the Cabinet Sub Committee
on Disaster Management had responded positively to their proposal. Medical
specialists show effective pill for poverty The Colombo Medical Faculty's widely respected former Dean Professor Carlo Fonseka and International Health Rights activist Dr. K. Balasubramaniam made the call at the first general meeting of the newly formed National Movement for the Rights of Patients. Dr. Balasubramaniam Asia Pacific coordinator for Health Action International said the World Bank's structural readjustment programmes later renamed as poverty alleviation strategy papers to prop up the market economy had without doubt increased poverty and widened the gap between the rich and the poor. He gave figures
with tables to show how malnutrition and child mortality rates in
rural areas of Sri Lanka though economic growth rates were reported
to be going up. Dr. Balasubramaniam challenged the World Bank/IMF definition of poverty and its estimate that only those who earned less than one US dollar a day were thought to be below the poverty line. He pointed out even beggars and street people in Sri Lanka often got more than 1 US dollar or Rs. 100 a day but they were enslaved in the most degrading poverty whatever the World Bank said. Dr. Balasubramaniam said government intervention and regulation to provide primary health care for all would be a key step towards alleviating poverty as the lack primary health care with its attendant evils like malnutrition constituted one of the main reasons why the poor were enslaved in poverty. Tragically the World Bank's latest volume on the poverty reduction strategy for Sri Lanka contained a mere one paragraph about primary health care. Professor Carlo Fonseka agreeing with that view said the capitalist market economy is outlined by Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes essentially worked on the principle that the role of the governments was to make the rich richer so that some of those riches would trickle down from the rich to the poor. But the concept had not worked with the crumbs or the amount trickling virtually drying up and the gap between the rich and the poor growing to monstrous proportions. Professor Fonseka said the basic concept of the capitalist market economy was selfishness or commitment to self-interest and this was leading to social injustice and destruction. He said the solution to this grave crisis was provided in all liberative religion- the virtue of selflessness and sacrificial service for the common good. Professor Fonseka who has molded thousands of doctors in his distinguished career at the Medical Faculty said 85% of ailments cured themselves and did not need medical intervention. While stressing the need to educate and empower patients to look after their own health he called on doctors to ensure they never did any harm to patients- physically, mentally, financially or otherwise. He pointed out prescribing unnecessary tests, expensive drugs and performing unnecessary operations amounted to acts that caused harm to patients. He called on doctors to relieve the suffering of patients as often as possible and to always console the patient as part of the medical ethics. The National Movement for the Rights of patients appointed a 20-member national action committee to work out practical steps for the education and empowerment of patients and to keep patients properly informed through the media. It was proposed that steps be taken to setup fair price cooperative pharmacies to provide quality drugs at affordable prices.
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