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| Sunday, 19 September 2004 |
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Letters |  |
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Please forward your letters to [email protected] in plain text format within the e-mail message, since as a policy we do not open any attachments.
Starting new development banks - another pipe dream? Dr. Sarath Amunugama and the JVP have been frequently expressing the need to set up a development bank to undertake the development oriented and rural based lending in this country. No one argues on the need for at least one dedicated development bank truly concerned about development lending. The two development banks DFCC and NDB, which were carefully nurtured by successive governments from 1950 and 1979 respectively, are now doing everything but development banking. They are into everything from commercial banking, stock and money brokering bill discounting, investment banking, forex trading, own account speculative trading, virtually all types of short term lending other than development lending. The sad irony is that there are nearly 50 other banks and large financial organizations doing all these things, but none doing pure development lending, which is the need of the hour. The DFCC and NDB was set-up essentially to divert the massive amounts of confessional loans that were being offered by OECD countries to Sri Lanka. Their function was to identify promising and viable projects, offer expert technical, production and marketing advice in addition to granting long term project loans. DFCC & NDB were expected to act with the long term interests of the country in mind and not follow short termist policies. They were staffed with appropriate skills consisting of bankers, planners, engineers, marketers and many such relevant disciplines. A major part of the credit for the high rates of economic growth seen during this period should rightly go to DFCC and the NDB. The shareholding and operational structures were geared in such way that the staff were able to give of their best, using all the private sector disciplines, while government held control and ownership but without any unwarranted interference. This structure encouraged a long termist thinking and created a pride in seeing small time industries becoming giants, adding to the productive capacity resulting in more jobs for the unemployed. All these achievements were reduced to nothing by the shortsighted decision of the last government to privatize NDB and the DFCC. Rest is now history. If the Finance Minister or JVP thinks that what was achieved in over 50 years by DFCC and NDB can be repeated by any new development lender both are sadly mistaken. The country is about to enter into another period of accelerated growth and no single new development bank can cope with the needs that will crop up. My view is that there should be at least two, one for the North and East and another for the rest of the country. But setting up new development banks will be next to impossible. The next best thing in such a situation would be for the government to take greater control of DFCC and the NDB by taking over 51% ownership of both. The government can then ensure that resources are diverted towards the real target segments benefiting the country and not merely enriching the shareholders of these 2 banks. That would be only way in which government can bring back the good old days for these 2 institutions when it was headed by dedicated and honest development bankers of the calibre of Ranjith Fernando and Maxi Prelis. D. L. C. Fernando, The nation and in particular the UNP should be grateful to the President and the SLFP for bringing the JVP into the mainstream of Sri Lankan politics. It is so comforting to hear JVP showing concern about the depreciation of the rupee and low productivity. Not long ago they were advocating infusion of capital into dead ventures like National Paper Company. We should also remember that these are people who were responsible for the deaths of many in 1970 and 1989. It is therefore childish for some professor to feel offended on a JVP statement that people who go abroad for postgraduate studies have no roots in this country. Or for that matter to keep on harping on a statement that, one individual is responsible for the depreciation of the rupee. But let us appreciate the changes in the attitude of the JVP. Rankoth Premathilake, English standard down if circular 842 implemented The UGC circular 842 released to promote Teaching Assistants and English Instructors has been revoked as FUTA was opposed to it. Teaching Assistants and English Instructors are agitating for the implementation of the circular. I reliably understand the circular paves the way for an English Instructor with seven years experience and one year Master's to be promoted as a Lecturer and an English Instructor with eight years experience and two year Master's with research component to be promoted as a Senior Lecturer. English Instructors are academic support staff and the basic qualifications of an English Instructor are much lower than those of an English Lecturer. A fair number of the English Instructors have irrelevant first degree in the English Medium. As most of them have earned the one year part time Master's in General Linguistics offered by Kelaniya University, they qualify in accordance with this circular for promotion as Lecturers. The admission to the MA degree offered by Kelaniya University, is open to any first degree holder and this degree is comparatively the easiest to earn and it has nothing much to do with English Language teaching. Recruiting present day English medium graduates as English instructors is a real blunder done by some universities. Promoting them as Senior Dons in English will lead to another blunder and it will very badly affect the English Education in Universities. These instructors with one year part time Master's and irrelevant first degree will never match the standard of a four year Special Degree holder in English with a class (except Affiliated University Products). If the circular is implemented the underqualified will fill the Lecturer and Senior lecturer vacancies in English universities preventing the candidates with the right qualification. Therefore the UGC should think twice before implementing this circular. M. A. Kaleel, National Identity Cards - why the uproar? The National Identity Card seems to have become a topic of debate in our political circles recently. There are political parties that are questioning the government as to why this sudden decision to introduce the production of one's NIC for voting at elections. What is strange is that Sri Lanka did not deem this a compulsory requisite to prove one's eligibility and identity at elections for so long ? This is not some manipulation by the present government as some people want to make it out, but a very normal practise in most countries in the world. Any government that thinks of introducing this, needs to be commended for having taken the initiative to even bring this subject up for discussions. The production of the NIC is a must in Sri Lanka when one visits any government department even to go and collect an application, collect any other document, or meet an official which is a normal day-to-day operation. For an event of national importance like voting at an election, why should it not be mandatory to produce one's NIC? If we have "long memories" (most often we have short ones), we will remember that the vote of the Presidential Candidate Mr. Hector Kobbekaduwa was rigged to deprive him of his vote during the time of the late Mr. J.R. Jayewardene when late Mr. Kobbekaduwa was challenging Jayewardene as a contestant at the Presidential Elections. The history of mass scale vote rigging since then, has been an extremely common and shameful phenomena encouraged by all subsequent governments with no exceptions to the rule. Every decent citizen of this country must support the decision to make NICs a mandatory requirement for voting at elections. Let us make the effort to "straighten and correct" our crooked ways if we hope to have a law-abiding society in this country. Darmitha, U. K. grants licence for human cloning for research! A few weeks ago Britain granted its first licence for human cloning for stem cell research. Contrary to the claims of many there is no scientific evidence to suggest embryonic stem cell research has more potential to lead us to viable treatments for various diseases than non-embryonic stem cells. There is, however, strong evidence to suggest the opposite is true. Leading stem cell researchers Robert Lanza and Nadia Rosenthal have concluded that embryonic stem cells pose the problem of spontaneously differentiating into a hodgepodge of tissue types and need "coaxing" to differentiate into desired cell types. In addition, embryonic stem cells carry the likelihood of immune rejection in humans which makes embryonic stem cell research an extremely dangerous if not impossible, prospect. It is little wonder that no therapies in humans using embryonic stem cells have ever been successfully carried out. It is also becoming clear that cloning is the only viable method of overcoming these restrictions. However, efforts to produce live animals through cloning have also met with an unusually high rate of deformities and mortality. Tests using human adult stem cells, however, have produced significant and encouraging results in the areas of Parkinson's disease, spinal cord injury, cardiovascular disease, sickle-cell anemia, and dozens of other conditions without posing any moral problem. On a biological level the pre-natal being is not like any other tissue: it is human with its own DNA indicating that - as a human - it has the same fundamental and moral rights as any other human being. In light of these facts the cry should be not for an increase in federal funding for embryonic stem cells, but rather an aggressive expansion of adult stem cell research. Paul Kokoski, |
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