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Collateral damage

The TIME magazine issue for the week of Aug. 27 had a big story on the war in Afghanistan.

In it, it cites leading Human Right organisations, and relief organisations about civilian casualties in the war waged by the US, Britain and its NATO allies against resurgent Taliban rebel groups.

According to humanitarian relief groups and others monitoring this war, they have now managed to kill the same number of civilians as the Taliban and its terrorist allies.

This factor is turning a lot of the Afghan rural population against the foreign forces.

The strategy now it seems is to train local forces and deploy them to rural areas.

The reaction is that “this is unfortunate collateral damage” in war. However it is very important that everyone in Sri Lanka know that the allied forces including a lot of Europeans have been accused of very many acts of indiscriminate and large scale shelling and air raids.

I would like to caution NATO representatives in Sri Lanka and Ambassadors to the US, Britain and other EU nations with troops in Afghanistan to refrain from throwing stones at the Sri Lankan Air Force. Compare how much money and technology you have.

You have satellite imagery that can pinpoint a licence plate on a truck, you have real time feeds from aerial surveillance that can recall an aeroplane seconds before a strike.

You have billions of dollars worth of equipment and research behind you. Yet your Governments shrug their shoulders and say “that is war and there will be collateral damage.”


Conservation of wild elephants

In order to protect the elephants from the danger of their extinct facing today, a solution to human-elephant conflict should be found sooner than later.

Taming and domesticating elephants is not a solution to conserve the reducing number of our elephant population. Finding elephants to parade in Perehera for festivals and other events are not priorities while many number of elephants are killed in their own environment as a result of human, elephant conflicts.

One of the key issues for this problem is uncontrolled clearing of jungles that destroys natural habitat for these animals.

Their shelter and freedom to live in peace are taken away from them. In most areas clearing for cultivation and logging the jungles for commercial use have become a common practice. In many instances, they are done with the knowledge of the area politicians who gives a blind eye in favour of their political supporters.

Taming elephants for domestic purposes worsen the danger of their extinction from our jungles. The domesticated elephants are chained all day and suffer because of the restricted area to move around. They have lost the freedom to live in the jungle where they belong to.

Some animals are handled very roughly and tortured by the cruel drunken keepers.

Their breeding pattern slows down in captivity than in natural environments. Therefore, conservation of wild elephants is more important than taming elephants for the purpose of parading in festival pageants.

It is time that as civilised people we must spare these noble animals from human cruelty and take necessary steps to keep them in their own natural environment.

There have been many instances where elephants had fallen into wells and pits and had agonising slow deaths without having proper equipment or care to save their lives. There should be specialised staff and heavy equipment readily available for rescue operations when needed and to transport them when necessary.


Train service or lack of service

Trains are definitely very economical and about the lowest priced in the world. But, yes there is a but.

The service is poor, employees are typically lazy, cares little of service, cannot keep the trains clean, inside or out.

Complaints are always answered with elaborate explanations, amounting to nothing, but aimed at perpetrating the status quo and perpetuating the poor service.

Some suggestions:

Suggest someone to clean the trains, inside - out at least once a day, evaluate them via passengers (not any CGR employees) and fire them (should be hourly contract workers) if the cleanliness is not at the best. They keep hotels quite clean, exceed that standard or more.

Make special provision for tourists, visitors, with luxurious trains, charge more, but re-establish a level of luxury, cleanliness, politeness, treating the customer as being always right.

Dispense with all excuses, except excellent service (no excuses, they are responsible even for so called acts of gods) then only we can progress.

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Gamin Gamata - Presidential Community & Welfare Service
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