|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Tuesday, 18 September 2001 |
 |
|
 |
Letters | |
| News Business Features Editorial Security Politics World Sports Obituaries
|
Professionalism in security is the remedy We Sri Lankans always believe that Security is a dead investment and the best way to handle it is to engage the cheapest or the least competent persons and depend on the cheapest methods and equipment and training in providing security. Aviation security is no difference. Besides this draw back selections of persons to manage are typical, 'Square pegs in round holes'. In addition each department or service or sector in the airport not excluding the staff has a tendency of creating their own 'empire' and converging on areas unknown to them and these cause confrontation which ultimately result in the harassing of passengers or customers forgetting their responsibilities. This is exactly what happen at the Bandaranaike International Airport. In the context of what took place on July 24, 2001 at the BIA. The Sri Lankan Airforce must take total blame for this national tragedy in view of their lack of vigilance and lack of foresight. At least Her Excellency the President and the Hon. Minister have realised that an independent team should be appointed to look into the failures and poor measures adopted and responded with what need to be done in the future to rectify them. It is prudent, that a retired judicial officer and retired SLAF commander constitutes the commission (sans a senior police and government analyst with the director of civil aviation). Let us hope that the present team will live upto expectations and will cover the task entrusted to them not denying the public of making representations and placing their views. With my experience as an airline security manager at BIA Katunayake in addition to what I have observed at this airport and the information I received from the media and the public the following measures should be taken to remedy the situation. 1. The airforce base should be shifted to another site away from civilian life. The commercial airport - BIA suffered this immeasurable loss due to the LTTE targeting the SLAF. I am certain the insurance companies which insure the airlines will definitely reduce the premium as the risk is reduced if the SLAF base is shifted. e.g. Hingurakgoda, Ratmalana or Koggala, as SLAF bases. 2. A separate para military organisers should be set up to provide security at the Air Force with police powers and training in fire fighting, Investigation and counter terrorism and hijacking. A similar organisation as the Singapore Airport Terminal Security Services (SATS) should be created having absorbed the airport and aviation security along with Sri Lankan Airlines Security. They should have powers of arrest and even investigate etc. with adequate training. Such a team could be educated in customer relations 'X' Ray reading, detection of forged and forged documents and detection of explosives etc. They will be geared to protect the public staff of the Airport and equipment at a desired level. The administrative body must constitute qualified and experienced personnel including the director of civil aviation. The manner in which the SLAF officers have conducted themselves not only during the incident but even in the past and even in checking of cargo meant for exports, is much to be desired with allegations of corruption. I am personally aware of loss of property and even the loss of TV sets from a duty free shop at BIA and even item from a Singapore Airlines aircraft in the past where the SLAF staff were suspected as prime suspects. As their vehicles and staff are not checked by AASL Security fearing reprisals. Under these circumstances, Sri Lankan Airforce is not the best to be deployed in providing security at BIA Katunayake. It is pertinent to mention that in the past too the insurgents were successful in infiltrating into the SLAF and caused a breach of security at the airforce base resulting with several SLAF staff being killed, even to the extent of causing threats and harm to the Airforce base and families resident in the premises. 3. There is an immediate necessity to conduct an extensive security survey by International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and International Airlines Transport Association (IATA) to ensure that the desired security in accordance with the present threat and laid down condition of annexure 17th of ICAO and IATA regulation for airlines have been complied with and what need to be done if the systems were there or have they failed at the most important juncture. As far as I remember no survey had been carried out by ICAO and IATA for several years to review the standard of security at the BIA despite a request made by me in 1997 to Chairman AASL. For such a survey the Security Manager of Airport & Aviation Services and the Security Manager of Sri Lankan Airlines is essential. (It is learnt that it was conducted) 4. According to public opinion and available information the Sri Lanka Aifroce always anticipated an attack on their base through infiltration from BIA, Katunayake the International Airport and decided to increase their power base by taking on the responsibilities of the Airport and Aviation Security and thereby driving them out by even manning the entrance and exits to the main building along with airport and aviation duplicating the functions. 5. The ground handling and security of airlines have been handled by Sri Lankan Airlines whose staff have been trained in accordance with IATA and ICAO requirements and even trained to identify dangerous, goods etc. and even the search of aircraft etc. Now the SLAF has detailed their staff to check the baggage of passengers without any competence, and without any concurrence with the Director Civil Aviation or Sri Lankan Airlines Security. This is a great risk and if we are to comply with IATA and ICAO requirements. They must be removed forthwith. The BIA as a whole may lose its international status, if trained staff are not deployed to perform these functions. 6. Director Civil Aviation should be consulted for changes in whatever form at BIA Katunayake as his position must be respected and valued. I am confident the present Director - Aviation will act with commitment and responsibility if he is consulted and given the task he will be a good guiding force. 7. A competent authority must be constituted to make the security of BIA comprising of Chairman Airport and Aviation - Director Aviation representation of Airlines, police, customers, Immigration, Petroleum, Intelligence, SLAF, Tourist Board. This authority must be given wide powers to improve the standards of security not forgetting customers relations etc. The recent incident indicated that no one was in command at the Airport at a time when competent leadership was most needed. The manner in which some passengers who were interviewed on TV, spoke to the media was ample evidence of this. All contingency plans and trained squads failed miserably leaving the passengers to seek their own means of safety when the airlines staff and airport ran helter skelter leaving the passengers in desperation. What better evidence of incompetency and failure of emergency and contingency plans (According to the passengers who were interviewed on TV). 8. It has been proved beyond doubt that technology must be used to the maximum along with manpower. Electronic fencing, CCTV, Alarm Systems response teams, perimeter systems and more advance technologies and trained Dogs etc. are some of them. 9. Modern systems of checking cargo with technology can reduce manpower, and unnecessary harassment of customers/passengers and exporters. 10. All residences and institutions one mile in radius must be checked in detail and closely monitored to prevent use of mortars and infiltration, into the areas in close proximity to the airport. Heathrow Airport incident some time ago is a good example. In fact I did suggest this to the then Chairman of Airport and Aviation and it fell on deaf ears (1996). 11. Supervision by night and day by management and supervisory staff is of utmost importance. These lapses are clearly seen at barrier check points, road blocks or even the last attack on the SLAF base. Complacency is one of the main reasons for such lapses. If the govt. must take cognizance of these lapses and commence upgrading the security in all other airports and even seaports. The entry of a hearse into the Colombo Port in the recent past, passing all security points without their knowledge is an eye-opener. The navy must be moved away from the Colombo Port as the Civilian ships become a target because of them. The Port Commission and Sri Lanka Ports Authority, must update their security and take more precautions and it is time they evaluated the security with a view to improve and upgrade it, to meet the serious threats of today. It is time they had their on boats, security equipment and even consult a competent expert in this field from Netherlands, Malaysia, Japan or UK. The Port must adopt at least three lines of defences to prevent a disaster. N. DE. ALWIS
This is a story of a person who is presently living in retirement after having given more than forty years of his best, towards the well-being of the country. As much as I am proud of my past, I still desire to spend the rest of my life in a very peaceful manner, and I expect others to help me to achieve this end. All what I yearn for, is a sense of fair-play. My hopes were dashed just a few weeks ago, when I was presented with a bill for Rs. 12,201.75 for a three day stay at this hospital. I now wonder whether they had applied the tariff meant for foreigners. Despite the advantage foreigners enjoy when settling local bills in foreign exchange, I am sure that even the foreigners would not have taken lightly to this form of billing. They could not have made this mistake as I appear a model of an ageing Sri Lanka. I have been suffering from a spine ailment for some time, and I have been frightened towards entering any private hospitals due to the state of my finances. I have made this point very clear to my friends whenever they advised me to seek specialised treatment in five star comfort in private hospitals. It was for this reason that I decided to enter this ayurveda hospital. Inquiries made, prior to taking a decision to enter this hospital revealed that their charges were moderate and it would not at any rate exceed Rs. 2,000 per day. When I contacted the Medical Superintendent of the hospital, on 16th August, I was told that they had only a VIP room. Though it sounded rather too uppish for me, I was told that the charge was only Rs. 800 per day. This room was air-conditioned, but not used due to the restrictions now place on the use of electricity. A Fan was good enough for me. Other comforts included a colour TV, a mini refrigerator and a telephone. The price was attractive and I felt obligatory on my part to look after my health. So I decided to take the offer. I arrived at the hospital at seven in the morning on August 17. After the usual entries were made in the admission card, I was escorted to my room. To my surprise, I found the room devoid of most of the items mentioned before. The staff were exceptionally polite and ever ready to put things right. A black and white TV set was installed promptly, but it failed to perform, and ended up an ornament in the room. This was replaced the following morning with a bigger colour set. It too failed to discharge its duties. I was summoned downstairs to be examined by the doctor with whom I had made contact earlier. I had a collection of various reports of X-rays that included an MRI scan taken earlier. At that state I was not told as to what they were going to do to me, but assured me that he will put me right. He seemed happy and I walked back to my room, with great expectations. I felt that all charges in respect of the various manipulations the patients are put through should be prominently displayed, giving the patient the choice under doctor's advice, to select what he desires in keeping with his finances. This facility was not made available to me at any stage. The Luxury items that came with the VIP setting and which fell short of my expectations did not worry me. I was going to follow all instructions carefully, and get back home a cured position. I was given two oil massages a day, followed up with a herbal bath in the evenings. A medicinal compact was applied to my back in the night. The food served, to say, the least was horrible, and it was often sent back. I lived on biscuits and cold water. The most disturbing thing about my stay there was the noise pollution, and very little sleep was possible even at night. An afternoon nap would have been a luxury, but it was not possible. I decided to undergo all these hardships as I was determined to get cured. I wanted to leave hospital on Sunday August 19, but was advised to stay until Monday, as they had decided to change my medicine. As instructed, I stayed on, but instructed the office to have the bills ready for settlement first thing on Monday morning. Directions were not followed and the bills were released only at 10.00 a.m. They took this opportunity to slam an extra half a day occupancy on the bill, I was given some medicine to be taken home. When the bills were presented to me at 10 am on Monday morning, I was taken by surprise, as the charges had exceeded more than four thousand rupees for a day. I could have enjoyed five star comforts in any of the hotels in Colombo at half the price. It would have been possible for me to get myself treated in any of the private hospitals enjoying all the comforts, at a much lesser price. I settled the bill without a complaint, as I was suffering from absolute shock. I have now settled down and have examined the bill carefully. Some detestable entries have been made, and some of them are incomprehensible. A breakdown of the bill for me three day stay is given below: Rupees 4118.75 had charged for medicines. In addition, Rs. 2375.00 had been added for herbal baths and fermentation. What is most annoying is the charge for food, Rs. 853.00 had been added on for food that I never consumed. Two laboratory tests for urine and blood were carried out for which Rs. 750.00 had been charged. In addition, there are entries such as R.M.O. charges, and Ward procedures that have been included in the bill. I feel the same now after three days of treatment, but what hurts me most is the feeling that I have been exploited by my own people. With any stretch of imagination, I am sorry, I cannot justify these charges. I know, that I will be failing in my duty as a responsible citizen of this country, if I do not bring this form of exploitation to the notice of the general public. It is particularly so when this type of abuse is directed at our own people. Recourse to Ayurveda in the country is on a steady rise, and we Sri Lankans should feel proud at the progress made in this field, but this form of exploitation has to stop. Maxwell Fernando In some western countries, at the first signs of a drought, wastage of water like the use of hoses for washing cars or watering the garden, is banned. We, without so much as drinking water in several provinces, still allow the famous gemming to go on, which means that there is constant blasting of rocks underground, thus disturbing water levels; ejection of water from every gem pit every morning to enable the gemmers to get at the 'illang', very often bringing nothing worth looking at for months. The whole process keeps hopes alive, wells permanently dry, rivers polluted, and the otherwise unemployed and unemployable, happy. S. BANDARA - Pelmadulla
In his The Discovery of India, a comprehensive survey of India's national struggle for liberation from the British occupation, Nehru observes: "History is always written by the victors and gives their view point; at any rate, the victor's version given prominence and holds the field. Very probably all the early records we have of the Aryans in India, their epics and traditions, glorify the Aryans and are unfair to the people of the country whom they subdued. No individual can wholly rid himself of his racial outlook and cultural limitations, and where there is conflict between races and countries even an attempt at impartiality is considered a betrayal of one's own people." It is for this obvious reason of injustice permeated through history, as precisely observed by Nehru, that contributors, in various capacities towards the building of a nation, need write their own history of personal and public life, which, is a more reliable source of information and inspiration, as well, to the contemporary readership and the generations to come. The art of autobiographical writing is a branch in the realm of literature that has not been passably exploited by the Sri Lankan wrier, but one that is greatly developed and passionately admired else where as equally pleasurable as any other medium. Its tremendous effect exerted on the mind of the reader, is always, more impressive than a work of history can do, and perhaps, even fiction for that matter. With the first hand information of one's life time experience, it tends to produce in the reader a genuine effect of motivation, self confidence, patriotism, personality development and so on. I should say this reassured in me by a great many times when I read the amazing works, in that genre, of a great statesman and freedom fighter, the world has seen in the recent history. The chief architect of today's South Africa, Nelson Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom struck me a note of unique experience which takes the reader's breath away with each episode unfolding the story of a man that breathed fresh life into a people of long oppression, through his endurance, astuteness and the gallant struggle of freeing them from the jaws of a tyranny. Undoubtedly, a regime of the cruelest type ever-witnessed on earth, it arrogated to the point of insanity as to practise an official policy of segregation and repression by reason of race and colour-apartheid. Thus, for the first time in their own country, those millions of innocent victims of colour and racial discrimination came to experience the meaning of human dignity and freedom, hitherto unknown under the white minority rule of hundreds of years. A moving exposition of one of the most valiant struggles, fiercely fought for freedom from the oppressor in the annals of the contemporary history, it has more or less outwitted a fictional adventure. Having fearlessly led the anti-apartheid campaign to the last of its resounding victory, until he bade farewell to the rigour of 26 year long prison life in 1990, he lays bare the biographical details from his childhood escapades to the pragmatic leadership as the President of a liberated nation. This, he renders before the reader, with unsuspecting genuineness and in such a style of simplicity and force that the hypnotised reader wishes the book were longer as it draws to its end. However, my aim here is not to subject Mandela's brilliant account of the birth of a nation to any critical evaluation from an angle of literature, but point at a glaring void in our literature of much prestige, produced by a long line of renowned scholars both in English and Sinhala. Our political literature, in particular, has not been enriched with his genre of writings of autobiographies although volumes of discourses of political philosophy from platforms or in Representative Assemblies, for not less than hundred long years, can be found among newspapers or Hansards. Let alone autobiographies even biographies are found to be quite a few in number. I can think of no other politician but N. M. Perera, who, since his defeat at the 1977 elections, started writing his life story, a few instalments of which were serialised in the Sunday Observer and the Silumina. Unfortunately, it saw an abrupt end with the dead suddenly striking him. In the aftermath of a victoriously fought out battle, yet, protracted until his robust youth took the form of an aged, emaciated figure, he did not want to see the historians warp the facts at a future date to their own likings. Mandela felt the dire need of this obligation by the posterity to keep them abreast of how he had to go through fire and water to redeem his nation, from being savagely enslaved by the apartheid in the kingdom of their own. This, regardless of the best part of his life wasted in a prison cell for twenty-six long years, prompted him to place on record his life long quest for justice. It is under similar circumstances, the Nehru had conceived the idea of publishing his biography for the purpose of public awareness of the Indian freedom movement against the British occupation. A feat in itself, Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom brings in a world of experience as is depicted in a dramatic performance, swinging between intense terror and gallantry, which is an overwhelming inspiration to his fellow South Africans; at the same time through translation, it fills his anxious readership the world over with great admiration. With its easy, yet, exciting style of narration of the undecided fate of a people under a despotic power, countered by open and underground strategies of confrontation between life and death, the reader is stirred up to feel the ordeal as his own. His boundless patriotism and unconstrained grit to rescue his agonised comrades bore him the intensity of a burning fire that no force could extinguish until he embraced the freedom to cool his ardour. Having led a series of nimbly planned political and armed protests in defiance of apartheid, he surrendered all that is his personal, physical and intellectual, to a relentless battle for liberation that awakened the African heart to walk through its agonies of defeat and retreat, finally to attain the goal of conquest. A living legend that he has become, he made himself a qualifying contender for the award of the Nobel prize thus making the story of Mandela easily the story of South Africa which stands today on equal footing with other nations. R. L. LALPREMA - Angoda Terrorism is not an act of God, but evil-minded-man made. There are two types of terrorism (i) naked terrorism like the one indulged in Sri Lanka and (ii) legalised terrorism commandeered by the powerful at their behest justified by usurped international tag like in Gaza Strip or in Iraq! Either of these evils begets evil. Time has come for all concerned to contemplate deeply and peacefully resolve to settle disputes with mutual respect to each other's point of view and in a spirit of give and take without sticking to ones selfish pound of flesh for sake of amity and peaceful co-existence and everybody's survival! For every evil under the sun, There is a remedy, or there is none; If there be one, try and find it, If there be none, yet mind it. W. SAMARaNAYAKA - Maharagama.
|
     |
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security
Produced by Lake House |
