Supplying the demand

With the food shortages in Jaffna, there is also a severe shortage of alcohol products.

But a method has been found to overcome this problem with illicit arrack being distilled in every village.

A 50 kilo bag of sugar is being sold at the princely price of Rs 12,000 in the black market and a bottle of arrack so produced is sold at Rs. 400. As the saying goes, necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

Business as usual

Transport Minister A.H.M. Fowzie last week directed that all private buses operating luxury inter-city services should carry passengers only according to seating capacity.

For other buses, the rule is that other than those seated, only half that number could go standing.

However no one was taking the new rules seriously as any one travelling on a bus could see.

The buses were packed to full capacity and passengers were undergoing the usual harassment.

Legal recognition

Visitors to the Sri Lanka Telecom website were surprised to find that an LTTE court is also listed as the District Court of Tamil Eelam, Kandy Road, Kilinochchi along with other telephone numbers.

Maybe SLT has decided to give them legal recognition.

Left, right but it was the other

There were two cadetting events and two different chief guests on two different days at the Army Training Centre recently.

Unfortunately last week’s references in this column were not to the main event where a respected senior Government official was the chief guest.

He arrived in Diyatalawa despite the pelting rain, and with his wife, awarded the certificates to those who came first, second and third and departed for an urgent official meeting in Colombo.

But there was another event held just a day before connected with the same occasion.

It is here that the chief guest was delayed because his other half felt she wore the wrong saree.

It is also here that he gave an award to his wife for her abiding interest in cadeting.