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
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)
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
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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