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| Sunday, 02 April 2006 |
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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.
Housing loans at 9.5% interest A housing loan is meant to help the middle class citizens to own a house of their own and thereby to solve the increasing housing problem of the country to some extent. The simple and normal procedure of liquidating a loan is to pay back the capital plus the aggregated interest in instalments during a period of time. The interest being calculated on the diminishing value of the capital. For example, if the loan is for Rs. 400,000. for a period of 15 years, the monthly repayment would be Rs. 2,222.22 plus the 1st month interest Rs. 3,166.67. Throughout the entire period of 180 months, repayment of capital would be Rs. 2,222.22 plus the interest calculated on the diminishing value of the capital. The total amount of the interest would be Rs. 286,583.33. The banks adopt a peculiar system of recovering the loan called "Repayment in equal monthly instalments." This is done by recovering a smaller quantum of the capital and a higher quantum of the rest at the beginning of the repayment period and gradually falls on to vice versa. Adapting this scheme now the banks are collecting a total interest of Rs. 531,171.64 or Rs. 64,588.30 in excess for the same period of 15 years. This loan is on a Government aid scheme and as such the government should immediately investigate this matter and instruct the banks to stop collecting excess interest. It is obvious that a normal borrower of this category will not be able to save Rs. 64,000.00 during his or her lifetime. S. M. Wickramasekera, Kalutara South. Some seem to make use of Internet as a means of making money and the best example is the mushrooming 'Cyber cafes' also called 'Internet Cafes'. There are a substantial number of cyber cafes in and around any city. One has to pay a sum of money in order to get the service from these places. Today, it appears that these cafes have become places that spread obscenity. Most of those engaged in Internet surfing in these places are students and they play games and also watch X-rated obscene movies from the Internet. Likewise, the many who surf Internet are curious to access these indecent websites. The persons coming to these places are at liberty to surf Internet as what the cyber cafe owners seek is only money. It is in fact the owners who often persuade them to browse through the internet. In fact, computer is a machine that should be used for good purposes, however by now, it is being misused. This kind of activities are anti-social and should be made punishable by law. L. W. Gamini Chaminda Kumara, Colombo 10. Can anybody sell or hire a top artery in the eye of the city of Colombo? It was cordoned off during the bad old days, because of the security situation, but today it is a completely different situation with so many new telephone systems turning up almost every month. Apparently all the telephone wallahs are milking the people of this country, as stated in the Observer. It is not only the Lotus Road that had been SL-tised. Duke Street behind the SLT has also been taken over by SLT to a large extent. Their guards, in connivance with the parking meter attendants, keep out other vehicles, claiming that SLT is paying for a large number of parking slots along this road. The present position in Fort is that four roads are permanently closed (Upper Chatham Street, Janadhipathi Mawatha, Baron Jayathilake Mawatha and the Chathiya Road. What if all the other telephone wallahs too demand their share, followed by the rest of the high and mighty from various other business groups demanding their share of the cake?. The basic question here is, who served the entire slice of cake to the SLT. As far as we know, all the roads in the country belong to the people of this country. We should not allow anybody to be given parking slots on public roads on a monthly basis. Kenneth R. Peiris Psychology of local political minds? It was nice to see in the Sunday Observer an analysis which gave reasonable coverage of the UNP's leadership in the writing of Mr. B. Philip! However, there is some confusion when one mixes the mind of Ranil, the waffler with the stated policy of his party (the collective mind), If this is (or was) professionalism at work, it is best the set back to the British or to handover the Ministries to the World Bank to control. Under usual loan terms, the borrower would have been for closed on and their assets taken over! "Can" the present tense. Would the creator have ordained it fair: that flowers be born to blush unseen, be consumed as flesh by predators foul, wasted, upon the desert's air that in aircon den and the jungle lair: be unseen unheard to yield not scream, but to hope have dreams and to rise supreme on soul intact with crown of glory on head of beautiful hair? Will it be a wee fair do I fit where'll I sit, this witless life a pedigree sleek thing? Will they dye their sparse hair, some bold pates etcetera, O'er 'specs a drooling mouthing: nice, but loads of arse, see? Some happy, delirious: see dear, feel it, yes yes! We're happy now forever looks good to hold, you see? They are inter connected no 'Net; perpetrated! 'tis better to give up at birth than live, mummy? Rohan Jayawardana, Dehiwala. I had to train a three-wheeler driver, a youngster of 21 years to write his name, as he was unable to sign his name to get the money due for his services recently. How many more are in this plight. The root cause of most of the complaints made by parents such as "No one can read what this child writes" "This one does not remember what he reads" is mostly the inability to identify and write the Sinhala alphabet. Is it children who are responsible for these deficiencies? No, not at all. Not only the children but graduates, lecturers, and also certain newspaper editors too have this fault. Distorted letters and words make most books and articles published, incomprehensive. Much wastage is caused by typists who are unable to type even a few lines without a mistake. How can plans be implemented if instructions cannot be worded properly? if the masses are unable to use the mother tongue? Can any developmental work be carried out? Would the administration be effective? Can "Mahinda Chinthanaya" be implemented? Sometimes children who come with problems like "school phobia" have to be taught writing in double ruled exercise books even at the age of over fourteen years. I had to go through the difficulty of the lack of a standard for form of Sinhala letters. Errors in the use of Sinhala language has been continuing over four generations and came to be treated as trivialities and norms until language became an incomprehensible jargon. These are just the symptoms which appear at the surface level, of the fundamental errors which lie in the infrastructure and are the consequences of the paradigm shift caused by post-modernism. Therefore, individuals and small organisations cannot find solutions. Language is the vehicle which carried the tradition of Humanness from generation to generation for 80,000 years and is only second to the latter. Language is the (material) means of endowing the cultural heritage to the next generation. All the rules and regulation and grammar have been evolved over centuries in order to enable the language to express ideas-the tradition of humanness, clearly and comprehensively and continue the tradition of Humanness for man to live peacefully. But the one-eyed specialists pioneered by Sossieur, misinterpreted that tradition, grammar, rules and regulations exist for the sake of tradition, to obstruct man from enjoying life - gratification of the five senses, subordinated the content of language to its structure and commenced waging a war against tradition of language and breaking all the rules of grammar (this is also an aspect of violence). Groping further into the darkness of secular knowledge they developed a notion that "man is a creation of language". It may be beyond the comprehension of post-modernists that "breaking the tradition" means ending the tradition of Humanness-culture and drifting down to beastliness. Present so called education systems which really are a knowledge Industry, are the product of post-modernity where children - humans are subordinated to the syllabus of secular knowledge. Consequently the school throughout world produce technocratic hominids (not children) who do not know their own language. Such fundamental errors, which are not easily detected, can only be rectified at public policy level. The main social crisis the world over is that policymakers never bother to pause as to where they have gone wrong - deviate from the existing framework of thinking. So at such a critical juncture National Education Commission (NEC), has produced a handbook to restore the tradition of Sinhala Language, named "Sinhala akuru liveema sandahaa maargopadesha" a guide to write the correct form of letters of the Sinhala alphabet which formulates a standard for Sinhala writing. It illustrates clearly how to move the pen to get the correct form of every tiny part of each letter and has planned an exercise book with five rules (replacing the present English double rule exercise book) to suit the Sinhala alphabet. The value of this work cannot be emphasized. It is very convenient to train children in writing using this guide. This is where the basic external aspect of endowing cultural heritage begins. The child thinks through the mother's tongue. Now the next urgent task is to make this available to all the teachers especially in the primary education in remote schools and the parents. As a person who has been involved for more than 40 years, in saving children from the present crisis, I deeply appreciate this timely service of the NEC. Dear parents buy this handbook as soon as it is available in the market, correct your language, and restore the tradition that has been rejected for about four generations and train your child at home to write the alphabet properly. Saumya Kodagoda, President/Director, Society for Promotion of WISDOM. Anandasangaree and the 'Indian model' This is only a short note in view of the confusion that has been created by Mr. Anandasangaree, long known and respected as a younger friend and companion. It is the solution to our political quagmire, and the adulation that a willing Sinhala public seem to be giving him. Anandasangaree has been headlined, in seeking an alternative to devolution and federalism, as advocating what has been called a solution - which apparently also the Sinhala public has embraced simply because it is from Anandasangaree. Anandasangaree called his solution "The Indian Model", apparently nameless otherwise. The Indian constitution is not a so called nameless one, Not federal, or merely devolutionary, it is a Union Government, and constituted accordingly. The evolution and final institution of this concept was due to a circumstance that carried a lesson. It was during the premiership of Jawaharlal Nehru and the States of India, in particular the Southern States, had become totally disillusioned with the adopted Constitution in operation. There were threats of distancing themselves from the Centre and even Separation, if the realities of India were not honestly accepted. It was here that Jawaharlal Nehru stepped in using his monumental authority, and at one stroke as it were, created and carried through the concept of linguistic States on paper apparently a divisive concept. The results were the opposite. A number of linguistic States came up and created an All Indian bond that never existed before. Nehru was vindicated. To be brief, whether we want the open Indian Model or not is another matter. Apart from using the proper wording to describe the Indian Constitution, the apparent following of Anandasangaree by Sinhala elements is sad indeed. This is all no reflection on Anandasangaree. May he prosper, may the main steam Tamil political leadership joint together and along with the new mood between Government and LTTE, we shall certainly find our own solution. No more is required than joint "right thinking, talking and acting". For myself I had the privilege of my own thoughts going back to my work in an earlier time with SWRD Bandaranaike, as in a recent Article in the papers. Devolutionary Government, Federal Government, Unitary government are all the same if we all know how to use them, and on the governmental side in addition, the government functions as a Participatory government and not a unitary government. Friend and companion, Colombo. |
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