President responding to people�s wishes through Trilingual SL
Disna MUDALIGE
 The 10 year national plan for a Trilingual Sri Lanka provides the
blueprint for the first determined effort by any administration since
1987 to seriously implement the provisions for a Trilingual Sri Lanka
already available in the law with the passing of the 13th amendment to
the constitution, said Presidential Adviser and coordinator of the
Special Presidential Initiative for a Trilingual Sri Lanka, Sunimal
Fernando.
The chairman of the Special Presidential Initiative for a Trilingual
Sri Lanka is the Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga and its
vice chairman Sunimal Fernando.
He observed that the vast majority of Sinhala and Tamil speaking
people both young and old from all levels of society and occupations
want to learn each others� languages and English. Referring to a
sociolinguistic survey of Sri Lanka conducted in August 2010 by an
independent research organization, he stated that it indicated very
clearly that in steering the country towards Trilingual society the
President was responding to the wishes and aspirations of over 90
percent of Sinhala and Tamil speaking people living across the country.
Mr Fernando also noted that no administration had sought to implement
the language provisions provided in law with any sense of determination
and passion until now. �For instance it is noted in the 10 year plan
that only about 15,000 public servants (1.5 percent ) of the entire
public service are being trained each year in the second national
language.
Also according to the school census data shown in it, there were only
1562 teachers teaching Tamil as a second language and 536 teachers
teaching Sinhala as a second language in the whole public school system,
even though the system would need 23,000 trained teachers to teach Tamil
to Sinhala students and Sinhala to Tamil students in the country,� he
revealed.
He observed that the biggest component of the task falls on the
Education Ministry whose responsibility is to deliver trilingual skills
to the youth through the public school system. �It is the task of the
Higher Education Ministry to develop Sinhala and Tamil as languages in
which discourse and discussion, research and debate in all fields of
knowledge and technology such as science, medicine, law, engineering etc
can be conducted with ease and competence.
�The task of the Public Administration Ministry would be to evolve a
Trilingual public service at all levels of administration while it would
be the responsibility of National Languages and Social Integration
Ministry to provide language learning facilities for public servants,
judiciary, the security services and the general public throughout the
country. In this daunting task, state of the art teaching skills,
curricular, training and translation skills and material resources must
be accessed and provided�, he explained.
�The 10 year national plan which was presented by President Mahinda
Rajapaksa and accepted by the Cabinet was launched officially on January
21 with former Indian President Dr Abdul Kalam participating at the
launch on the President�s invitation as the guest of honour. The
President declared the year 2012 as the year for a trilingual Sri Lanka
on that same day.
�The broad objective of the 10 year national plan was to spur the
country within next 10 years towards a Trilingual society in which all
people would be conversant in Sinhala, Tamil and English. Sinhala and
Tamil would be the languages of discourse and discussion and English
would be a life skill for accessing information and technology from the
outside world and for qualifying our people for employment in the global
society� Mr Fernando said.
The national plan was developed by an advisory committee of 23
persons, the majority of whom were professors and former professors of
Sinhala, Tamil and English. To coordinate the implementation of the 10
year plan the President appointed a special Presidential taskforce for a
Trilingual Sri Lanka with Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratuna as
the Chairman.
A Task Force office is also being established within the Presidential
Secretariat with a retired senior public servant G A J Sylvester as the
Director General. Prof Rajesh Sachdewa, a leading expert in trilingual
language planning and former Director General of the Central Institute
of Indian Language in Mysore will be working for seven days a month for
the taskforce as a consultant. |
