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If all the school heads and school children’s parents had abided by
and adhered to the children’s school admission, rules, regulations and
circulars to the last syllable of the words we could have saved some
millions of litres of gasoline annually.
See the number of school buses and vans on the roads on a week day,
you may wonder from where they come and join the roads making heavy
traffics.
Some school buses and vans cover well over thirty to forty miles per
trip and school children board the buses and vans at about five or five
thirty in the morning.
But if you go through the home addresses of the children you may see
stars, they are just two to three hundred metres away from the schools.
But they cover seventy to eighty miles to and from school and home
daily. Who should be responsible for this?
The errand, unscrupulous, money hungry school heads and sophisticated
parents with inferiority complexes. I should like to call upon the
Department of Education to make a survey about the school admission
addresses and present address of the schoolchildren.
They may find well over eighty per cent of the addresses are fake.
Why not put the children back to their closest schools. If you put them
to their closest school, the State would be able to save some millions
of litres of fuel annually.
Next the Grade One to Five schoolchildren should not be given CTB or
train season tickets beyond five kilometres.
Because the school admission circular, pay more emphasis to the
distance from the school to the child’s home address: But the heads of
schools and some parents flout them for a fast buck.
To save fuel, the school admissions should be strictly based on the
distance criteria than to make loopholes for the opportunists to creep
through.
Even after admissions the authorities should find wether the children
come to schools from the given addresses.
D. M. P. B. DISSANAYAKE – Kegalle
The JVP appears to be planning a general strike. That is not out of
sympathy for the people, but in desperate search for a forum to boost
their dying image, no doubt about it. Everybody knows that the Cost of
Living is sky-rocketing. Is a general strike the solution? Will it not
aggravate the situation? And, then who would suffer most?
The JVP should learn a lesson from the past. The Marxist parties who
resorted to strike for solutions, finally ended up with their parties
being reduced to insignificances. People in general hate strikes.
The majority of the strikers who gain due to strikes too, align with
mainstream politics once they are better off, because strikes mean
indiscipline and harassment, and nobody likes it.
Why not the JVP or any other party request the people to control
their living habits such as to give up smoking, drinking, gambling etc.
and take to home gardening wherever possible. Finally, we ourselves have
to solve our problems.
E.M.G. EDIRISINGHE – Dehiwela
It is a forgone conclusion that to get anything done through
Government departments in this country takes years.
However, it is pathetic that sensible people still wait for months or
even years to get some work done, hoping against hope, whereas it would
be simpler to do it themselves.
For example, we often see pictures in the papers about ‘Pits on the
roads, where people have fallen into’, or ‘unprotected railway
crossings’ or ‘overgrown play fields’.
While it’s true that it is the duty of the authorities to attend to
these, it’s also true that these are not Herculean tasks for our people
either.
For example, why couldn’t someone just cover this pit with some
planks at least?
What prevents some good Samaritans to clean up the overgrown lawns of
schools or public buildings? Remember we live around these hazards, not
the authorities.
If they won’t do the job, at least let us do it, so that we have a
pleasant, safe surrounding.
According to Islam, even removing a stone from the path is considered
charity - so while making our own surrounding better, we accrue
blessings too.
Let’s not ask what our country can do for us - because it can’t and
won’t - do much at present - so ask what we can do for our country -
because we are our country.
DR. MAREENA THAHA REFFAI – Dehiwela
Some have expressed in your column their concern for eating meat or
fish fearing that it is a sin. All organisms have to feed to live. Only
plants can manufacture their own food. So animals have to depend on
plants or other animals for their food. Carnivores cannot live without
eating other animals.
If eating an animal is a sin, eating a plant also should be a sin as
both are organisms carrying out the same living functions such as
growing, breathing, responding to stimuli and reproduction. If one opts
to live by eating seeds and fruits, then also he commits robbery of
things from plants.
Destroying the embryo in a seed by eating it should also be a sin.
Sin is only a religious belief introduced to tame people by instilling
fear of its effect in a next birth.
One should not desist from eating fish or flesh because in religions
it is taught as a sin but because of compassion for a more developed
form of life.
A. D. GUNASEKERA - Panadura
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