Letters to the Editor
View(s):Land bridge: Consider the potential health issues
While I concur with the major issues brought up, I would like to expand on health issues that were given a ‘one liner’. Anybody aware of the British period in our colonial history must be aware of the epidemics of infectious disease that accounted for an enormous morbidity and mortality amongst both our local population and the colonists. Diarrhoeal disease, Cholera, Amoebic Dysentery, Bacillary Dysentery became rampant, due to the estate labour force brought by the British colonists, travelling to and fro from India when they went home for festivals etc. Smallpox followed suit, as it was endemic in South India.
Going through the Internet I notice that water-borne diseases, like acute diarrhoeal disease are yet endemic in Tamil Nadu with sporadic outbreaks of Cholera in epidemic proportions. 1.5 lakh-infected people live with HIV and AIDS in the state. Fortunately, Malaria and Leprosy, are, it seems, coming under control.
Awareness of these facts is a must amongst those who are responsible for making these decisions. One must note that our Health indices have been achieved by the remarkable effort of our Public Health sector, and should not be undermined ‘by one fell stroke’.
Dr Channa Ratnatunga Via email
Some proposals for collective action
We Sri Lankans have spent a long period of 75 years as a free nation. All our leaders have been democratically elected. At the general elections, they all promise to make us a country flowing with milk and honey.
Yet we are still forced to go round the world with a begging bowl. Economically we are in the bottom of a trench deeper than the Mariana in the Pacific Ocean and we are still borrowing to feed the nation and also to pay the interest on the loans taken. The debt we owe international and local lending institutions will take many more years to pay off.
This letter is to propose an action plan to save money and repay these loans. It’s three-fold: increasing exports, reducing imports and curtailing day to day spending.
Every Sri Lankan from the highest in the land should take part in this effort making a few bearable sacrifices.
The President, Prime Minister, Speaker of Parliament, Ministers and administrative officers should take part in the first three-month phase which should begin on October 1, 2023.
The second phase should begin on January 1, 2024 and continue for three years. Every citizen should take part in it.
- Encourage healthy men, women and children who go to their workplaces and schools using government transport to walk to the location if it’s less than 2 km away.
- Encourage people to use push cycles
- Limit the import of wheat
- Restrict the import of light vehicles and import buses instead.
- Stop the use of fuel wasting luxury vehicles
- Stop religious and cultural festivities temporarily
- Coffins are made of soft wood but they are sold at exorbitant prices. Let’s all make our final journey in a simple cheap box that everyone can afford
- Modernize the old bullock cart for transporting goods.
- Protect our tea which is of high quality
- There are many Lankans living overseas – we can enlist their support in this hour of need.
- We have so many rulers – 225 Parliamentarians, nine provincial councils with umpteen officials and more than 300 divisional councils with their councillors. Ensure that they make a worthwhile contribution.
H.M.P. Wickramarathne Kengalla
Economic poverty made worse by other forms of poverty
If we cast our minds back to history in search of instances where human beings have been suffering due to discrimination, oppression and injustice, we will see that even in the first century, mankind has been subjected to violations of human rights though such rights were not enshrined in a U.N. Charter. Despite all these lofty promulgations and pronouncements and the establishment of the United Nations High Commission in support of Human Rights, we are still confronted by reports from various countries around the world of instances of the violations of human rights to a lesser or to a greater degree.
Be that as it may, we in Sri Lanka are experiencing an exponential rise in violations of human rights and connected freedoms which though guaranteed by the Constitution of our country are nevertheless violated with impunity for political expediency.
The most frequently targeted are those engaged in the profession of journalism irrespective of whether they belong to the mainstream media or social media.
The most recent incident is that of the journalist and social media activist, who when he was engaged in covering a protest rally in Borella from a three wheeler, was forcibly dragged out and assaulted by the Police. He had to be hospitalized.
The citizens in Sri Lanka are already burdened with a bankrupt economy and have to eke out a living with the limited amount of resources at their disposal, struggling to make ends meet. On top of all these economic hardships which the people have to endure, they are further burdened with the poverty of the enforcement of the law. Those law enforcement officials whose prime duty is to protect the people from criminals, have now become tools of the powers-that-be who themselves are known to violate the law with impunity. In the words of Robert Chambers “Income-poverty is only one aspect of deprivation. In addition to it, poverty also includes social inferiority, isolation, physical weakness, vulnerability, seasonal deprivation, powerlessness and humiliation”.
“First they came for the Communist and I did not speak out, as I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialist, and I did not speak out as I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionist, and I did not speak out as I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out as I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me”
- Martin Niemoller
Ridley Casie Chitty Via email
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