• Feeling of justice and fair play

• Get tough with negligent motorists

• Tea as national beverage

• Trade Unions, the bane of the country's economy

Feeling of justice and fair play

Sri Lanka has many 'first' to boast and even with regard to postponement of thousands of cases year after year it should beat all the other countries. The whole judicial system in the island has to be revamped and the people should be made to feel that 'justice' and 'fair play' are still alive in this resplendent island.

A classic example of travesty of justice here is the way in which the cases filed regarding 'fundamental right violations' are dealt with. An aggrieved party goes to court to seek justice over a grave injustice caused to her or him.

A colossal amount of money is spent as legal fees for the lawyers. The party concerned produces ample evidence in support of his or her contention. The case gets postponed several times with the victim filling the pockets of the lawyers with each successive sittings of the courts. What finally happens is that the judicial body concerned attempts to close the case suggesting that the two parties iron out their differences and agree for a settlement. Here it is the aggrieved party that stands to feel let down.

After years of mental agony, wastage of time, energy and so much money, the victim is asked to settle their dispute with the other party.

The ultimate winner in this whole exercise are the respondents although the offence against which the fundamental right case is filed could range from one of blatant cheating to contempt of court itself with the respondents not even been issued with a warning not to indulge in such misdemeanours as alleged by the petitioner leave alone granting his or her 'prayers' in the petition to the Court on the denial of fundamental rights.

S. WIMALARATNE,
Malabe

Get tough with negligent motorists

Your editorial on April 28 should be an eye opener to the authorities concerned to take swift action to tame this private bus service mafia who have taken the law on to themselves and killing innocent people on the highways. Pedestrians are not safe even on the authorized road crossings.

The civil society should agitate until legislation is framed to stop this menace. The bus owners' associations should be made responsible for training the drivers and conductors who should carry a certificate with them. Picking up street urchins as conductors must stop.

In the pre-Nationalized era bus companies were responsible for the passengers. The employees were disciplined. South Western Bus Company, Matale Bus Company were role models.

The National Transport Commission should organize flying squads to travel in buses incognito and bring offenders to book for violating traffic rules.

In your editorial you have mentioned to erect rail gates to close the road completely. With the introduction of colour light signalling in the railway for faster movements, the farm gates had to be replaced with barriers operated automatically.

With the leading wheels of the loco touching the track at a specific distance an impulse is given to the mortar fitted to the barrier when signal for road traffic turns red and the bell starts ringing. With the complete closure of the barriers the signal for the train movement turns green.

A road user creeping under the barrier ignoring the warning bell can get trapped in if there was another barrier on the opposite side of the lane. Hence the half barrier system.

As an interim urgent matter the RDA should build the concrete land in collaboration with the railway at these level crossings to a sufficient length to prevent vehicles getting on to the other lane.

B.B. PERERA,
Ratmalana

Tea as national beverage

Tea drinking has become a national trait since the plant was introduced and the industry was developed profitably by the British not only to the commanding heights of the country's economy but also etched a lasting for 'Ceylon Tea' in the international market.

As much as we in this part of the world are used to the refreshing brown-tea, green-tea is the popular drink in China and Far-East.

The custom is that in China, a visitor to a house need not wait until the householder welcomes him, visitor could help himself to a cup of sugarless, aromatic green-tea from a teapot in a cozy conveniently placed on the mirrored hat-rack facing the entrance, without standing on ceremony.

In a way we are fortunate that we have not taken to harder beverages like beer, wine, cider or artificially dyed and flavoured and sugared drinks. Medical opinion is that habitual tea-drinking minimises chances of heart-attacks.

With the open-economy and indiscreetly opening our doors and windows to capriciously engulfing capitalism, multi-nationals though they swear for our betterment, but in practice put in disarray our traditional not-so-greedy habits which we cherished for our identity as a nation.

The massive advertisement campaigns launched, for instance by sweet-water selling multi-nationals, have, if not altogether eliminated, certainly has down rated local entrepreneurs in the soft-drink trade. Impact of propaganda mounted was so ravages, our traditional tea-drinkers, specially among the youth took to sweet-water to quench their thirst as if a modern vogue haunting among them.

Medical men caution the nation that the diabetic percentage among the population is ever on the increase. Could this phenomenal change from traditional tea-drinking to sweet-water, be attributed to this national bane?

Hundreds of restaurants cropped up all over the country since 1977 consequently to open-economy, but 90 per cent of them do not cater to tea-drinkers. Very often after taking food, one has to go elsewhere for a cup of tea.

Tea industry is yet in the commanding heights of our economy. Serving tea must be made compulsory in our restaurants and hotels, and made a pre-requisite before issuing such licences.

It is true that restaurateurs and hoteliers prefer to sell sweet-waters, to tea as one could extract a few extra rupees from the thirsty on the pretext of cooling the drink. But to turn away a tea-drinker due to such petty monetary consideration, in his own country of birth is highly immoral and absurd where tea-drinking habit has taken root in the country for over one and half century and still tops the national revenue.

W. SAMARANAYAKA,
Maharagama

Trade Unions, the bane of the country's economy

An annual spate of holidays which is far in excess of the working days, compounded by sick leave, annual leave and casual leave, leaves the country dry to the bone in the economy.

Tragic conclusions can be drawn from the fact that May Day is now celebrated more by politicians rather than by trade unionists.

Marxism folded up in abject sack cloth in the countries that spawned the theory and we in democratic Sri Lanka uphold the dubious virtues of the hoi polloi.

I was a radical too in my callow youth and the vanguard had men and women worthy of adulation. We idolized NM, Colvin, Peter, Philip, Bernard, Reggie, Leslie and even their women like Kusuma and Vivienne had brains and derring do.

I worked at Shell, one of the three blue chip companies of the time and we never went on strike because we were well cared for and the Trade Unionism within the establishment was enlightened. But farther down the road I was disillusioned as I saw wild cat strikes.

The country was at the time run by only eight ministers who propelled the economy with decisions taken on the prudent advice of their exemplary Civil servants. Today, if a Secretary does not cow down to the bidding of a Ministerial directive, he is transferred to a Siberian desk.

The Independence that was engineered by our forefathers, ably manipulated by the shrewd Sir Oliver who planted heady undergrads like Gamini Corea in paddy fields and in tea kiosks to hoodwink Lord Soulbury has been, in the final analysis, proved to have been premature for an under-developed country where eminence and mediocrity are lumped together with the strength of one vote.

Today there are bus strikes, railway strikes, school strikes and even strikes in the Medical profession. Are these not the death knells of our culture which is supposed to be the end product of over 2,500 years of civilization?

A multi-National Shoe Company would give free meals to its workers. Several had been the occasions when a 'bad egg' of an employee would, at the tail end of his meal announce that the fish served was foul. Word of mouth relays and the resultant agitation would end only when the employers speedily served boiled eggs even though the meals had been very nearly gargentuated by then. I am privy to this story from the leader of the Company's Trade Union.

In another multi-National Company dealing in a multitude of consumer products, a worker was found to be having an unauthorised siesta on the premises during work hours. He was given a charge sheet. The Trade Union activists took up the stance that the man had fainted.

If these matters related here are not of irresponsible Trade Unionism, please tell me what they are. They want to protect 'bad eggs' purely for the price of membership rather than cleanse the Augean stables.

In the early 70s an island-wide strike crippled the mercantile sector. Men and women workers were on the streets. I was in the balcony of the Regal theatre with my wife and there a few rows in front was the leader of the Trade Union in the gay company of a bevy of damsels, chewing on fit bits and chatting away merrily, impervious to the rack and ruin displayed on the pavements. He had earlier been gifted a vehicle with the contributions of members of the Union.

My colleague in school, Mano Breckenridge, wrote and produced a play based on this strike where a young mother prostituted herself to buy a tin of infant milk for her child. Come on, Sri Lanka, think again; you are living on the verge of an economic tsunami that will engulf all of us.

SHARM DE ALWIS,
Kiribathgoda