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Mahapola grants to be withdrawn if students' found guilty of misconduct - Minister Karunanayake

Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Ravi Karunanayke who is also in-charge of Mahapola Trust Fund yesterday announced that with immediate effect the Conditions of the Mahapola Higher Education Scholarship Trust Fund will be put in to full force leading to the withdrawal of grant to any student found guilty on act of misconduct.

He was speaking at a special interview held at the Ministry yesterday, the Minister referred to section 2 2:1 wherein it has been clearly stated that scholarship will be discontinued if the student was found guilty on act of misconduct.

The Minister also announced that the Mahapola scholarship terms and conditions will be amended soon so as to include cases of ragging where if any student found guilty of this offence shall also lose the scholarship grant. An Undergraduate receives nearly Rs. 75,000 as total grant for their entire period of study at the University. He said monies withdrawn would be given out to others who needed most, he added.

He said that although the Mahapola Trust had been disbursing grants for nearly 23 years, no action was taken against any student for violating University rules. Time has come for us to put in to force these conditions, he added.

The Minister accused the JVP for misusing the university students for their petit political gains and emphasised that the Jaffna University had never closed over student unrest, amidst of the two decades of a civil war prevailed.

He said that more than 7,000 students are receiving the Mahapola scholarship annually, but only a handful are being involved in anti social activities such as ragging.

"University students in the rest of the world are being graduated at the age between 22 to 23, but it was unfortunate that until recently, our students got their degrees at the age of 28 and 29 due to the blunders made by the JVP during the past terror period of 1987 to 1989" said Mr. Karunanayake,

He emphasised that this would in no way mean pruning down the Mahapola scholarships or privatisation of the Education as the measures taken were intend to prevent loosing more young lives in the future. "The government strongly feel that Universities should be de-politicised and students should be assured that there would not be any hostile environment within campuses to conduct their studies freely" the Minister added.

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