Private firm attempts to hijack Presidential initiative

The Daily News reliably understand that authorities are concerned about an attempt by a private firm with British collaboration to hijack the “English as a Life Skill” Project conducted by the Presidential Secretariat in association with the Ministry of Education.

The brand name “ENGLISH AS A LIFE SKILL” has been widely used both nationally and internationally by the President since November 2008 to identify his popular initiative to take Spoken or Communicative English skills across the small towns and villages of the country.

The specificity of the Presidential Program is the Sri Lankanisation of English. The de-legitimising of ‘British English’ also known as ‘The Queen’s English’ and a concomitant recognition of a ‘Sri Lankan English’ and its dissemination through the education system together provide the hallmark of the Presidential Initiative ENGLISH AS A LIFE SKILL’.

The program is currently being implemented aggressively in all nine provinces with technical assistance from India and ideological guidance from Sri Lankan Academia.

It has now transpired that an opposition parliamentarian earmarked to be the Education Minister under the imaginary government of the defeated General had not only decided to forthwith privatize the Presidential initiative ‘ENGLISH AS A LIFE SKILL’ and transform it into a commercial enterprise but had even handed it over in anticipation to his cousin - the local agent of a British English Teaching Outfit - for implementation as a money-making venture.In the process, ‘Sri Lankan English’ which is the defining feature of President Rajapaksa’s initiative was to be replaced once again by “The Queen’s English” popularly known as the ‘Kaduwa’, the hated instrument of social oppression and hallmark of the British teaching program.

Not having the patience to wait till the elections were over to enjoy his kill, the money-hungry entrepreneur had put his ugly act together with his British masters and even started advertising “ENGLISH AS A LIFE SKILL” as HIS program under the name of his private company.

Having robbed the brand name of the Presidential initiative in the expectation of his candidate’s victory, the greedy entrepreneur’s dreams now lie shattered while he prays to his God that the law will not catch up on him.

A senior educationist stated that “It is immoral, unethical, dishonest and illegal for a commercially oriented foreign English teaching agency enjoying a licence to operate in Sri Lanka to rob the brand name of a Presidential project “ENGLISH AS A LIFE SKILL’ and market English courses using the very same name for money making commercial purposes”.

Now that the grand plan for the privatisation of the Presidential Initiative has ended in a pipe dream with the President’s landslide victory, “the continued use of the brand name ‘ENGLISH AS A LIFE SKILL’ by the said foreign agency will amount to a despicable attempt on its part to deceive the public into thinking that its commercial teaching enterprise in Sri Lanka is in fact the same as President Rajapaksa’s popular and much advertised National Program”.