• LTTE inhumanity to Tamil civilians

• Tobacco and Alcohol Control Act

• Half completed Kawdana Road in Dehiwala

• Villagers often victims of crocodile attack

• Pension rights of retiring regular Armed Forces medical and dental officers

  
   

LTTE inhumanity to Tamil civilians

The LTTE shows novelties in many ways. It was recently reported that the closure of the A 15 by the LTTE forced the Tamil civilians in Vakarai to trek jungle terrain to reach cleared areas. Among the civilians were the aged and the infirm, children and babes in arms and pregnant mothers.

This jungle trek through rugged terrain was more than sufficient to develop the pains of labour. It was reported that more than one mother had delivered by the way with improvised midwifery and one mother had delivered close to an army check point where medical aid was close at hand.

Closure of the A 15 was one of the many 'humanitarian' gestures demonstrated by the LTTE. Midwifery by the wayside reminded me of the book 'this good earth' by Pearl S. Buck who described pregnant mothers developing labour pains while working in the paddy fields and seeking the shelter of a shrub to deliver the baby and complete the procedure. Whether the LTTE had this in mind could be sheer conjecture.

The LTTE paradoxes are hard to beat. They want the golden egg laying gooze (the A9 high way) opened on humanitarian grounds on the one hand and close the A15 highway to Tamil civilians wishing to reach cleared areas preventing them from receiving aid.

I recall working in a remote part of Sri Lanka where roads were rugged, irregular and pot-holed and pregnant mothers were transported to hospital in bullock carts which took the ruggedness of the road in its stride much to the discomfort of the patient increasing the intensity of the labour pains causing mothers to deliver before they reached the hospital.

The LTTE probably has taken a leaf from this book.

It is worth mentioning the appearance of T. Sampanthan on a private TV channel giving an interview in India.

He was flanked by two TNA Parliamentarians and made it a point to describe the sufferings of the Tamil civilians and blaming it all on the Security Forces.

He probably had a LTTE unseen with a gun pointed to make sure he did not stray from the LTTE stance and what they wanted him to say.

ARAVINDA GAUTAMADASA,
Nawala

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Tobacco and Alcohol Control Act

I wholeheartedly welcome, the enforcing of this act from December 1, 2006, which I feel would have come into force many many moons ago. In the meantime the Health and Nutrition Ministry and other law enforcement officers must try to educate the public by holding seminars and distributing handbills etc. that such and such places are banned from smoking and consumption of alcohol.

As this menace is thoroughly absorbed in our society, I personally feel it is unfair to give people who violate this law without giving them an adequate time to educate and adjust themselves. We being a leading democracy in the world, it is better to be little fair by our ignorant public, till they are educated on this subject. Anyway, I thank the JHU for introducing this Bill.

On my recent visit to India, I found in all star class hotels I visited, a board is exhibited in the lobby saying 'No liquor is served for persons below 25 years'.

I wonder whether such warnings are found in our star class hotels. If such notices are in force, please pardon me for my ignorance.

I hope the Minister of Health and Nutrition who takes a great pain to eradicate this menace from society to take further measures to educate our poor public on this matter.

EDWARD NANAYAKKARA,
Moratuwa

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Half completed Kawdana Road in Dehiwala

Apropos R.P's letter of September 25 there have been many letters in the Daily News regarding Kawdana Road.

Although over 12 years have passed, the Kawdana - Attidiya Road in Dehiwala has still not been widened from the old Sub-Post Office upwards.

Sometime back the Road Development Authority came along and measured the road and placed yellow coloured cement structures (like tomb stones) with the letters RDA on them. Everyone was, therefore happy that at last the neglected road was to be widened. We are still waiting in hope.

The Kawdana Attidiya area is now very densely populated unlike 12 years ago and also boasts of a bus service where a single bus plies up and down from the Dehiwala Station to Attidiya (Route 981) at the whims and fancies of the driver and conductor at different times with no set time table, thus inconveniencing commuters.

In addition, there is very heavy flow of traffic on the Kawdana - Attidiya Road, and as a result of the heavy traffic, the roads are in a deplorable state with large pot-holes, leaking pipelines, piling up of broken bricks and concrete from houses, overflowing of drains etc.

There have been many changes in the Municipal Council but no action whatsoever has been taken by the authorities concerned to start widening the road. Would the Minister of Highways Jeyaraj Fernandopulle kindly look into this matter.

VERNON DAWSON,
Dehiwala

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Villagers often victims of crocodile attack

The river at Godapitiya, a village in Akuressa is infested with man-eating crocodiles. These marauding reptiles have snuffed the lives of many poor and helpless victims in the past. Recently a woman was attacked and she narrowly escaped but she had to be rushed to the hospital for treatment.

The authorities should take serious note of the fact that it is the poor people who make use of the river for bathing, washing etc. as they do not have proper bathrooms in their houses. Further, it is a daily need that they cannot avoid. Therefore, it is time that the Provincial Council of the area or some other State institution took immediate steps to provide protective bathing places.

L. PINDENIYA,
Godapitiya

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Pension rights of retiring regular Armed Forces medical and dental officers

The much publicized, Presidential intervention and subsequent Cabinet approval for the formulation of regulations, entitling pension benefits for the Volunteer Women's Corp personnel in the Armed Forces retiring after 15 years of service, equivalent to those retiring from the Regular Forces after 22 years of service has been widely appreciated.

This is an open letter to bring to the notice of President Mahinda Rajapaksa that in the same Armed Forces the Regular Commissioned Medical and Dental officers retiring not after 15 years of service but after 35 years of service, are made to retire as civilians on a civilian pension minute and are deprived of all the pensionable allowances particular to the service personnel they received during their entire service tenure, in the Armed Forces, based on a regulation promulgated in 45 years ago, in 1961 at a time when there were no pensionable allowances in the Army Pay Code.

Ceylon Government Gazette Extraordinary published in September 1961 states that every Medical and Dental officer, shall be entitled to receive all other allowances as are payable to officers, in terms of conditions laid down in the Army Pay Code and the rates of pay and allowances of the Medical and Dental officers of the Army shall be revised to equate them to those recommended and accepted at any future date for Medical and Dental officers in the Department of Health Services.

All allowances received by service personnel were non-pensionable allowances, until January 1985. The Ration Allowance authorized by MOD letter D/39/H(VI) of January 25, 1978 implemented with effect from January 1, 1978, the Qualification Pay and the Good Conduct Pay were made Pensionable allowances by a Cabinet memorandum in 1988 to be effective with effect from January 1, 1985.

The only difference between the minutes of pensions as applicable to the Government Departments, and the Army Pensions and Gratuity Code is the calculation of pension using the percentages of the consolidated pay depending on the years of service as the service personnel could retire at the end of twenty-two years of service, in contrast to the optimum retirement age of fifty-five years of Health Department personnel.

Pensions are calculated on a percentage basis to ensure that within reasonable limits a person can live comfortably in his retirement. The current unfortunate situation is that the pensions received by a retiring Service Medical or Dental officer as a civilian is about Rs. 7500 less than the pension received by anyone else in the entire Armed Forces because of the exclusion of the Pensionable allowances particular to the service personnel for the calculation of the pensions which they did receive, during their entire service tenure.

As the Commander in Chief, we sincerely expect, your kind intervention and grant us redress on the same guidelines, principles and policies that were used for the formulation of regulations, entitling Volunteer Women's Corp's personnel retiring after 15 years, benefit equivalent to those retiring from the Regular Forces after 22 years of service.

It is also pertinent to place on record that the total number of Medical and Dental officers who had retired after serving over 35 years in the Armed Forces in the last twenty years could probably be even less than twenty people which is in fact the wasting rate.

The formulation of regulations to calculate pensions of service medical and dental officers using the percentages of the Army Pay Code after taking into account 'All Penisonable Allowances' received by them whilst in service and entitle them to retire as Service Personnel, remains the only just and fair proposition.

The only consolation a Regular Medical or Dental officer, after giving his entire professional life to the Armed Forces enjoys now, as a terminal benefit on retirement is his last rites to be buried or cremated as a serviceman whilst, from the Date of Retirement till his Death he is treated, as just another civilian on a Civilian Pensions Minute.

BRIG (Dr) TILAK N. SENANAYAKE (Rtd.),
Colombo 8