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Development of dairy industry

Much has been said and many interested parties have made sound proposals in the overall development of the country in providing gainful employment to the rural masses.

Today with the increase in prices of imported milk by an average of Rs. 28 to Rs. 30 per kilo, average income earners will be forced to reduce much needed intake of milk by growing children. This will in turn retard their growth. Repercussions of this could best be explained by a paediatrician.

Many specialists in the dairy industry have come with sound proposals accepted by Governments in power and implemented. In some instances cattle have been imported and in one instance air-freighted. Unfortunately, we have not improved the industry mainly due to lack of interest by the rural farmers.

Perhaps due to laziness and complaints to politicians regarding the high prices and Cost of Living and demand a high wage/salary. The employer has to generate funds to meet their demands, this is not possible as most of the time requests for increases in wages are unreasonable and not related to output.

If we develop the dairy industry as all Governments have attempted and maintain continuity, we would be self sufficient like India in milk. Vast sums of money in foreign exchange is spent on importing dairy requirements of the nation. This expenditure could be gradually reduced by dairy development.

Proposals to achieve self sufficiency in milk

1. Appoint dairy development officers to each district to work under veterinary officers. They should be given targets and incentives to those who achieve good results.

2. Pay a price in keeping with market prices of imported milk. This is only fair as the lock dairy farmer has expenses which are not known by many such as veterinary services, cattle feed besides grass. A good cow today is over Rs. 45,000 and an investment of that nature should provide a respectable income. this income is achievable if a fair price is paid to the farmer.

3. Dairy farming can provide gainful employment to the rural farmer who could develop himself and the family by producing other products such as curd, yoghurt, ghee and cheese.

4. The most important bi-product is the compost that could be produced to fertilise the home grown vegetables. Excess produce could be sold through the village boutique.

5. There are many more benefits to the entire population and the economy of the country. Tea plantations can encourage dairy farming and if dairy sheds are developed on top of hill features, wash down of such farms will enrich the soil providing natural fertiliser to the tea plantations.

I appeal to the Government and the Minister in charge of dairy development to give leadership to this vital industry.

D. F. Mawanella


Kandy’s dogs are once again not sure of their right to life

Since the President declared a no-kill policy in May 2006, there is hope for man’s best friend, though the problem of funding an islandwide sterilisation-project is still not solved and that leads to problems for the dogs, as well as for the people.

In Kandy however, where the local authorities had stopped killing dogs already in 2002, soon again the cyanide-pole may strike because the Mayor and the council-members do not respect the directive of the country’s first man at all.

A pending court-case has prevented the KMC veterinary officer Dr. Jayasinghe from killing dogs, but now it seems he has been able to convince the Judge of the District Court, that Kandy has to be cleansed of street-dogs.

The judge has given us a short span of time (until October 5) to reduce the street-dog-population humanely, otherwise he would have to allow the KMC to take charge of the dog-population-control again.

Obviously we won’t be able to create a big visible difference within the period given, all we can do, is to prevent the dogs from having puppies; and that we have been doing for the last five years, not only in Kandy town, but in all surrounding villages too: a total of ten thousand surgical sterilisations have been conducted by us. As a result, the frequency of dog-bite-treatment has gone down by more than 50 per cent in Kandy and Peradeniya Hospitals.

Birth-control is a long-term approach, which tackles the problem at the root, while killing or removing the dogs from the road makes an immediate impact, but it does not take long until the killed or removed dog is being replaced, often not only by one dog, but by several others.

We have witnessed this during those years, when the white van was cruising the town, collecting dogs, mostly owned dogs because strays are not easy to catch, and then transporting them to the dog-pound in Gohagoda, where they were held for a few days under the most inhumane conditions and then killed in the most terrible cruel ways one can imagine.

Nobody in Sri Lanka would easily tolerate the scenes, that took place in Gohagoda those days, but because the killing of dogs has been going on for so many centuries, many people seem to have come to the idea, that there is no other way in order to curb the population. But were there really less dogs around during those bloody days?

It was a very wise and courageous step, which our President took, to change this outdated policy, but the hundred year old rabies-ordinance has not yet been replaced by a better law and the KMC tries to hold on to that piece of antique from the British times, when there was no rabies-vaccine.

What can we all do now to stop this cruelty returning to Kandy?

Firstly: make sure that the dogs in your own neighbourhood are sterilised, please call us for assistance (0602-801736, 077-7426229).

Secondly: let your representatives know, that you have not elected them to kill innocent animals.

It’s because of the silence of the gentle and kind people, that the cruel and wicked have their way. Please speak up for the sake of your dog, he will not be spared when the KMC dog-van takes its rounds again... now we can still prevent it if we speak up.

SAVE OUR FRIENDS ASSOCIATION (SOFA)


Delay over widows’ and orphans’ pension

How long must it take for a woman, after her husband, who was a permanent and pensionable labourer and later watcher in Government Service, had expired to draw her widow’s pension?

Here is a strange case in the Department of Agrarian Services at Ampara, where a widow, who has now completed her 79th year and mother of 12, had still not been paid her W & O.P although her husband expired six years ago in 2001 and the Department had been furnished with his death certificate promptly.

Three Members of Parliament of the Ampara and Batticaloa Districts had made representations to the Head of the Department and one member had even raised this in Parliament last year. Yet the matter stands dismal.

The Department has no records of his service that the widow had to furnish copies of her husband’s letters of appointments and promotions from papers he had left behind.

Where has the break-down been in this case? When the deceased husband was appointed as a permanent and pensionable labourer and later as watcher in 1960, the department should have obtained the necessary marriage registration entry and furnished it to the Department of W& O.P., for her to have been issued with a W& O.P. number on a card.

Sweet nothing had been done regarding this, for the case to be groping in the dark now; for, the Department was a money spinner over purchase and sale of paddy than to have taken any care over its labour folk.

What is worse even certificates of marriage and death registration entries sent by the widow by registered post to the commissioner in 2001 appear to have been lost or misplaced that copies had been called for again after six years.

A question arises as to what would have happened to the W & O.P, contributions recovered from the deceased husband while he was in service.

Incidents of this nature call for case studies that if the department had been a private institution, there would not be ugly incidents of this nature.

K. A. THAYARASA , Colombo 15


Diyawanna in Kotte

It is well known that a large number of villages with Sinhalese names in the Jaffna peninsula have been perverted by the addition of a suffix here and a syllable there. But these changes take place generally by repetition over long periods of time. But we now can see the rare spectacle of changes of place names before our own eyes. I refer to the so-called Diyawanna in Kotte, with the newer accretions of a road and Oya attached.

The literal translation of this word is Where Wan bathed Water, as if people bathed things other than water. We have seen buffalos bathing mud or herd of baby elephants being given a mud bath and who is this ‘Wan’? After this reduction ad absurdum, let’s try to get to the bottom of this conundrum.

My grandmother who was born in Kotte about 135 years ago called this lake in Kotte ‘Juannawa’, so did everyone else till twenty years ago. But ‘Juannawa’ also prima facie appears to be a conundrum.

True light on this matter dawned on me about seventy years ago. A grand old gentleman of imposing stature a teacher at C.M.C. school one Gamalathge, steeped in the lore of the Kingdom of Kotte explained that this lake was named after the place where the King Don Juan Dharmapala bathed. Darmapala, King of Kotte in the 16th century, a convert to Catholicism under heavy Portuguese influence was dubbed ‘Don Juan’ in Portugal.

This is therefore a plea that the little that is left of this historic kingdom of Kotte (after its total obliteration by the Portuguese) be faithfully preserved. Otherwise before long, what happened to village names in the North could happen here.

WILEIN D. ABEYGUNAWARDENA , Boralesgamuwa

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