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Best political marriage since 1948!The SLFP-UNP political marriage, is the best move to be made in the recent political history of Sri Lanka. We are all aware that the present Constitution has befallen this Nation into a great political crisis, which has made a mess and a curse to the whole Nation. This mess has effected all successive Governments who cannot get a clear cut majority and who are forced to depend on small political parties to form a Government. These allies who support to form a Government have a great bargaining power and in many instances hold the Government in power to ransom. The urgent need of the hour is peace for our country, as without peace if we go on like this we will definitely end up as Ethiopia or Somalia! If peace has to be achieved, these two major political heavyweights have to definitely get together, work together and look eye to eye. I, as a Christian feel our prayers for peace has been heard by God, and our prayers are definitely going to be answered in the near future, because through this political marriage the dawn of peace is a matter of time. The small political parties who enjoyed the maximum blessings through this constitution for their own survival, the time has come for them to say good bye as there will be no more demand for any bargaining when the two heavyweight giants are together. This war has to end and the time has come for all political parties to fall in line for all genuine causes which should have a lasting political solution for our Nation. Li Kuang SHU, --- Traffic congestionSince late the traffic movement from Narahenpita to Borella along Baseline Road in Colombo has come to a near standstill. It takes approximately 30 minutes to travel from the Police garage junction to Kanatta junction. I noticed that the traffic lights at the Kanatte junction have been changed to make it change colours fast. I am sure this was done with a purpose but it seems to me that it has not served its purpose. Further to this misery a no parking policy has been implemented in the parking areas created with the construction of the new highway which has caused a lot of inconvenience to parents who have to drop off children at the British School. Whilst appreciating security concerns may I request that parking be allowed only for 5 minutes for each vehicle which would enable the parents to drop off their children. For the monitoring you may involve a police reservist or a municipal ticket collector. M. FAZAL ABDEEN, --- Email scamsThis is in reference to D.C. Ratwatte's email on email scams and lottery solicitations. Please do not fall for email scams. There are thousands of such scams across the globe. Some of them purporting to be from crooked Nigerian or other African officials offering to share money with you if you help them transfer money out of their accounts. The other is inviting you to send in a 'processing fee' because you have won a lottery etc. A lot of third world people are still immature about these scams because they come via Internet email. These are just a more sophisticated way of hoodwinking people just like old chain letters and postal solicitations. Please don't submit personal information or bank account information to anyone over the internet or email. If you are doing legitimate ordering via the internet from legitimate companies selling products via the internet, go to their websites and check to see if they have secure, encrypted transaction processes for example with VeriSign. No one should be fooled by emails even if it says "if you do not forward this to five people you will befall some misfortune", "if you send this email to people Microsoft will donate 3 cents per each email to some hapless cripple or orphan", "if you send me your bank account and a nominal fee you will get a million dollars" etc. Most Internet deals are illegal in the west, but sadly in our countries, laws are a bit lagging behind the technical savvy unscrupulous devils or jobless idiots with creative imagination who used to send chain letters. Take precautions by: First, set up a general HotMail, GMail, Yahoo mail type account even when you order products from even legitimate websites. That way your personal email is protected from SPAM (Electronic junk mail). Second, NEVER EVER give out personal information, addresses, phone numbers, bank account information, credit card information to anyone soliciting them via email. Your credit card companies will not do that. There are scams which try to direct you to websites that look a lot like your credit card company websites to capture your card information as well. They will say "PayPal wants you to update your card information, and passwords" etc, or "your credit card company needs you to update it" etc. Finally, do not have easy passwords such as your name, children's name, or your spouses' names as passwords. A good password should combine Capital letters and lower case letters along with some numeric value. For example 'DaiLy2006NeWs' will be a better password than the word 'password' or 'ratwatte' or your child's name. Please use common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, it is indeed too good to be true. You are better off with your money in a fixed deposit in Sri Lanka than in the hands of some crooked man in Johannesburg or Lagos or Moscow 'phishing' for personal information. What does that term 'phishing' mean? It is the act of emailing a user, falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a website where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organisation already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user's information. Do not ever respond to those scams because even if you reply negatively, that allows them to capture your IP addresses and to verify that your email address is legitimate, so that they can send more SPAM. MANO RATWATTE, --- Monitor missions abroadI hope the meeting the President had with representatives of the missions abroad will put all the staff working in such missions into perspective. Some of the missions and specially the one in South Africa does not give any importance to improvements at all. It was well known to every body when a certain person was the Trade Officer and now in this mission is invisible and I think it is high time that the authorities check the work done by the man in charge of our image outside. He seems to be more interested in handling internal affairs with more interest and care. He even has given a bad reputation to the South African Community by not opening the Mission on time and having his three-course meals until 9 in the morning , keeping the local staff outside the gate in the cold. Before this goes to the South African newspapers, and makes us feel so ashamed of our Embassy, please take him out of this country as soon as possible. He is simply useless. S. PELPOLA, South Africa, --- Remembering the Senior CitizensI am writing this in response to the article that appeared in the DN of Oct. 11, made by the new Railroad Development Minister. I also feel that some comment as regards its contents would definitely be much appreciated by the kind hearted citizens of the calibre of the Minister. I am also in my late sixtees together with my wife who is three years my junior. I have read many articles that have appeared in the papers on the above topic from time to time. The HelpAge International Organisation's involvement in the welfare of the Senior Citizens is a meritorious act that should be appreciated by each and every right thinking Sri Lankan. In some instances, some children look after their elderly parents, but some owing to their own family commitments are helpless in doing so thereby leaving the poor old parents to mend for themselves and suffer in silence. The Senior Citizens who are ex-government servants get their monthly pensions to survive though not sufficient, owing to the present high Cost of Living as well as the high cost of medicine and drugs which most of them have to pay. Taking into account the ones who are not getting a pension or any other income whatsoever, and also, who do not get any support of anyone suffer in silence awaiting a call from the other world. One should not forget the services rendered by these Senior Citizens whether they were in the State sector or otherwise. They have really toiled during their service of period when compared to the present day employees. My idea of writing this is to get the attention of the Government to implement some form of assistance by way of a pension or some kind of payment to those who were not State employees. This will enable these Senior Citizens who are in the evening of their lives to manage their day-to-day existence without being a burden to anyone. If the particular ministry could do something for these helpless Senior Citizens without much delay it will definitely be a meritorious act. MERILL DE SILVA, ---- A nation of Sri LankansI agree that the time has come for our country to step up and act as civilized as we say we are...People have to know it is not right to judge others by their race, religion or ethnic backgrounds. Racial hatred and discrimination laws have to be written and enacted, so we can move forward as a nation of 'Sri Lankans'. GAVIN, ---- SLAFEveryone of us believed that the SLAF played a major role in the military success against the LTTE during the past few months (Reference DN Oct. 11). With the President all of us should appreciate them. CYRIL EKANAYAKE, |
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