‘Community based bi-lingual programme, a great success’

Chamikara Weerasinghe

Post-war reconciliation has progressed steadily over the past few years as a result of a highly successful bilingual movement with better communication skills being established at public sector institutions to serve the public with the official language of their choice, National Language and Social Integration Ministry sources yesterday said.

The Ministry’s National Education Training Institute Director General Prasad Herath told the Daily News, they are in need of teachers as at present to facilitate the needs of over 500 language societies that wish to learn Sinhala and Tamil languages. “There is a considerable number of language societies in the North and East that have registered with us. We have sent teachers to assist them,” said Herath.

“The Social Integration Ministry’s community-based bilingual programme has become popular across the country,” he explained.

As pointed out by him, promotion of community-based language programs to elevate levels of bilingualism among the masses have shown a greater degree of success than bilingual programs introduced to train public servants.

He said although it has been made law that public servants should acquire proficiency in the other official language other than the language through which they entered the service, most of them have shown very little interest or no interest in the acquisition of these skills.

“Contrary to this, language societies which are formed by villagers among their communities show greater interest to develop their second language skills,” he said.

National Language and Social Integration Minister Vasudeva Nanayakkara has reportedly agreed to recruit some 7000 persons having Tamil and Sinhala Lan guage skills to be trained as language teachers. They will be sent to village societies at the request of their heads to teach their desired language to interested parties.

“It must be mentioned that the program has become so effective since anybody can participate these language programs , be they children or adults.

The children and youth seem to get along very fast,” he added.

Herath also said , “ I can say with my three and half years experience that community based language programs are going to play a major role in national and social integration.