Letters to the Editor

The whole world is watching in utter disbelief the tardiness, inaction and ineptitude of this country to come to grips with the demand of the people to re-introduce the death penalty to stem the tide of brutal murders, rape and robbery sweeping the country.

Gang warfare and political killings are the order of the day. Helpless young girls on the way to school are carried off to the scrub jungles, raped and murdered.

Those who have unlawfully grabbed others’ lands and are awaiting the Court verdict against them put an end to the legal proceedings by assassinating the entire family, as in the Hokandara and Dehiwela Harmers’ cases, with complete contempt for the Police and the judiciary. Army deserters with T-56 weapons roam the country in stolen vehicles and rob banks at will.

What really is the Government doing in this tragic situation? Are they bullied by a few so-called human rights activists? Politicians are afraid to demand the death penalty for fear of being branded ‘blood thirsty’. But when Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike was assassinated the death penalty was restored post haste with retrospective effect! What sheer hypocrisy!

On the other hand, look at the scenario in the West Asian Arab countries where murderers and rapists are executed without much ado. Robbers have their hands chopped off also in public. They have discipline in their countries and have set an example to the rest of the world.

Sri Lanka cannot afford to be bogged down by those so-called human rights activists. Remember, tourism will undoubtedly suffer sooner or later in a land of utter lawlessness where helpless old couples and young girls are murdered and raped with impunity.

Cry, cry my beloved country –
For a peace that lies in pieces
Torn off bodies of little children –
And Buddhist monks.
Just people travelling on a bus
Some going for medication to a clinic
Others to a funeral
Of a home guard -
Returning home after duty.
164 bus tickets torn
and lying in the debris
of yet another claymore mine…
No, not wild elephants we have to fear now
Creeping out of the jungles –
But two-footed animals in human garb -
Running from fear of the EU ban.
Cry, cry my beloved country -
Over a war that flows endlessly -
Like the Mahaveli
Flowing down the land –
While the answer
Is blowing in the wind…

A recent news report that the government is contemplating allowing women who remain unmarried to draw their dead parents’ pension would have no doubt gladdened the hearts of all such women.

Most of the pensioners when they die leave practically nothing behind. These women who are well past marriageable age lead a life depending on their in-laws, sisters or brothers for their sustenance. As they do not have any money their kith and kin treat them sometimes like domestics.

If the President could under the “Mahinda Chintanaya” be magnanimous enough to allow these women who have lost their parents to draw the parents’ pensions themselves it would be a meritorious act and would immediately brighten up the lives of one of the most forgotten and neglected group of people in society.

The intern medical officers’ monthly salary was to be increased from January this year, by Rs. 1,600 in all government hospitals as stated in a circular issued in December 2004, by the Health Ministry. But, up-to-date this increment has not been implemented at the Kalutara General Hospital. It has been corrected at most hospitals including Kalubowila, Karapitiya etc. This lapse is due to the inefficient clerical staff at the Kalutara General Hospital. Their lame excuse was that, they never received the circular.

When a group of doctors finally brought a copy of the circular from the Kalubowila hospital, they were told by the clerk-in-charge that, it would take several months for them to calculate the arrears!