|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 8 February 2004 |
 |
|
 |
News |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
Suffering airman appeals for lawful pension from RAF Aranayaka special corr G. B. Wickramasinghe, presently residing at "Victory House" Pinnalanda Watta in Rambukkana is a disabled old man suffering from acute paranoid. He was an aircraftman in England's Royal Air Force from 1962 to 1964 (2 years and 4 months), and had been discharged from the RAF in 1964, as he was diagnosed to be suffering from Paranoia. Mr. Wickramasinghe had been discharged without any payment of compensation or gratuity. As he had no friends or relatives in England, to turn to, he had wandered as a penniless vagrant on the streets of London in a pitiful state, suffering the pangs of hunger and exposed to the elements for some weeks until his repatriation to Sri Lanka by the Sri Lankan High Commission in London - after he was brought to his motherland he had been admitted to the Angoda Mental Hospital - he had been an inmate of this hospital for eleven years from 1964 to 1975. After repeated appeals along with medical reports to the RAF, submitted by the parents of Mr. Wickramasinghe, the War Pensions Agency in Norcross, Blackpool in England, had approved a pension payment to Mr. Wickramasinghe from 1976, but the period of 12 years from 1964 to 1976 had not been considered in the context of the payment of a pension. This is a gross violation of a human right, as Mr. Wickramasinghe is lawfully entitled to a pension from 1964, the year of his discharge, and not from 1976 - appeals are in the process of being made to be forwarded to the RAF in order to get this pension backdated to 1964. |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
