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| Sunday, 9 May 2004 |
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Rukman Senanayake on elephant donations The Sunday Observer of 18th April 2004 under the heading 'Fowzie stops elephant donations' has indicated that, on a complaint made by the Deputy Minister of Transport Mahipala Herath, the Minister for Environment and Natural Resources A.H.M. Fowzie has stopped donations of elephants from Pinnawala. Your article further states that ten elephants were gifted on my initiative and another ten tuskers are identified to be gifted to the Kith and Kin of UNF members. This is a totally false accusation. The gifting of elephants from Pinnawala started in 1977 and to date 61 Elephants have been gifted accordingly. All successive Governments followed this same course of action of donating elephants to religious institutions. Incidentally the PA Government of 1994 to 2001 gifted eight (8) elephants from Pinnawala to religious institutions. This policy was continued under UNF Government where eight (8) elephants were gifted to religious institutions, and two (2) elephants to the Japanese Government to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between Sri Lanka and Japan. These two (2) elephants however were not removed from Sri Lanka but subsequently gifted to two religious institutions. The gifting of Elephants was regulated by me by obtaining Cabinet approval for my Cabinet Paper dated 19th August 2002. This for the first time laid down conditions for gifting and also provided authority to the Department of National Zoological Gardens to take them back if the conditions are violated. Finally the gifting of elephants from Pinnawala was suspended by me as Minister of Environment and Natural Resources on a Cabinet Paper submitted on 27th August 2003, which was endorsed by the Cabinet on 17th Sept. 2003. This was done because the demand for Elephants for religious activities were very high and the only solution to the problem was to initiate an Elephant Training Center completely managed by the Zoo Authority, where the elephants were to be loaned to Peraharas and brought back to the Training Center after the event. The decision of the Cabinet was as follows: a) Elephant Training Center will be established under the Department of Zoological Gardens. b) Donations and sale of the Tuskers / Elephants from Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage will be suspended till required amount of Elephants are obtained. c) The possibility of obtaining Tuskers from India to be added to the training group will be pursued. d) Rouge Elephants will be captured by the officers of the Department of Wildlife Conservation and hand them over to the Department of Zoological Gardens to train them. No kith and kin of UNF members or any other are to be benefited by this decision. Incidentally there are no ten tuskers at Pinnawala, there are only three tuskers, one old blind tusker and another tusker brought recently from the Dehiwala Zoo and the other is a young tusker being trained for breeding purposes. |
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