1,000 IDP candidates among others:

Forty-two ex LTTEers to sit A/L examination

by P. Krishnaswamy

The Department of Examinations will issue special Identity Cards for over 1,000 displaced candidates at the Vavuniya and Chettikulam IDP centres to facilitate them to sit the August 8 GCE(AL) examination.

This number includes 42 former LTTE cadres and the ICs will be issued as a special arrangement considering the unusual circumstances under which the candidates are sitting the examination, Commissioner General of Examinations Anura Edirisinghe told the Sunday Observer.

This is the first time that they were issuing ICs to candidates sitting an examination, he said. Many of the former LTTE cadres who surrendered to the security forces and now in welfares villages on an amnesty granted by the Governtment have expressed a desire to pursue studies in an effort to return to normal life and the Examinations Department was doing everything possible to assist them. The Department has also provided text books, past test papers and instruction facilities, the examinations chief said.

Officials of the Department together with photographers will visit the welfare villages next week to take photographs of the candidates and to issue ICs to them on the same day. Examination centres for these candidates will be set up within the welfare villages where the candidates are housed, he said. Over 5,000 grade five students from IDP welfare villages and camps who will sit the August 23 scholorship examination are being taught by campus students and displaced teachers coordinated by Education Department officials including Regional Directors and their subordinates, Edirisinghe said.

Past papers books, exercise books and stationery and furniture have been issued to them, he said.