FUTA plays into hands of bankrupt politicians

The Inter-University Students’ Federation (IUSF) and the Federation of the University Teachers’ Associations (FUTA) are making a mountain of a molehill on the so-called crisis in the country’s education sector. They recently conducted two protest marches to woo public sympathy by projecting a gloomy picture on the country’s education.

Surprisingly, none of these dons or student union leaders dares to explain the crisis that they have been projecting. The FUTA’s popular slogan is to allocate six percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for education. Several eminent economists such as Dr. Lalithasiri Gunaruwan have highlighted that such a demand is unrealistic and impractical.

In contrast to what the FUTA and the IUSF have been projecting about a so-called downfall in the education sector, the Government had increased its budgetary allocation on education. Compared to the year 2005 in which President Mahinda Rajapaksa took office as the Head of State, the annual allocation of funds per student had been increased by over three times up to 2012.

Moreover, annual funds allocated for education have been increased several-fold in recent years. If one were to peruse the funds allocated on education during the past decade, it would be clearly seen that it was only during the 2001-2003 UNP Government under Ranil Wickremesinghe that funds had been pruned.

Regrettably, none of the lecturers had the courage to tell Wickremesinghe, who joined the FUTA protest march to gain political mileage, that it was the Opposition leader’s previous Government that slashed funds on education. An inveterate Wickremesinghe now sheds crocodile tears at a time the UNP has been relegated to the dustbin of politics.

Indeed, we respect the rights of lecturers, or any other worker for that matter, to take trade union action to find solutions or resolve their problems through dialogue. However, holding the future of GCE Advanced Level students to ransom and refusing to correct answer scripts of the examination held in August cannot be condoned by any means.

It is a crying shame that the FUTA strongly believes that its refusal to correct the A/L answer scripts is the best tool to support its trade union action. FUTA President, Dr. Nirmal Ranjith Devasiri has openly acknowledged that the best tool to strengthen their trade union action is to refrain from A/L ‘paper marking’. The million-dollar question is whether such action is fit and proper for responsible academics such as university lecturers.

Around 250,000 students sit the Advanced Level examination annually and wait eagerly for the results that would determine their future. In this context, there should be sufficient time for those who fail the examination to prepare for the next. Keeping students on tenterhooks and curtailing the time for those who fail to gain university admission to sit the examination again is most unbecoming, to say the least.

School teachers and university lecturers have a moral obligation to correct examination papers, for which they are paid separately. FUTA could by all means stop conducting lectures as a trade union action, but it has a bounden duty when it comes to marking Advanced Level examination answer scripts. FUTA’s stubborn refusal to correct answer scripts of the A/L examination is akin to doctors refusing to carry out emergency services during trade union action.

Neither doctors nor engineers keep away from emergency duties even during the height of trade union action. When doctors go on strike, they continue to provide emergency services such as accident service, ICU and Cardiac Units. Similarly when electricity or irrigation engineers and workers strike, they would still man strategic locations and distribution points.

In sharp contrast, striking university lecturers even stop attending to duties such as marking of Advanced Level answer scripts. Higher Education Minister, S. B. Dissanayake had quite rightly pointed out that the FUTA’s unethical decision to refrain from correcting A/L answer scripts is similar to a doctor not putting the finishing touches after surgery. They were the university lecturers themselves who set the Advanced Level question papers. After the students sat the examination and answered the question papers, the very same lecturers now refuse to mark the answer scripts.

This is like a doctor refusing to suture the patient after surgery. It is a high-handed and unreasonable act on the part of university dons. In the event the FUTA is sincere in its trade union action, sans any hidden political agendas, the lecturers should have marked the A/L answer scripts, despite the ongoing strike.

It has now come to light that it was the FUTA which had invited Opposition politicians to join its recent protest march from Galle to Colombo. Though the dons took up the position earlier that the Opposition politicians came uninvited, to extend their support to university lecturers, Opposition politicians who joined the protest march for short spells now say that it was the FUTA which had extended written invitations to them.

In this scenario, the FUTA played into the hands of bankrupt Opposition politicians who could not muster the people’s support at the polls. These misfits who have been defeated times without number at successive elections, exploited the opportunity and gave lavish television interviews to resurrect their moribund political images.

While Opposition politicians made the maximum of the protest march from Galle to Colombo, senior professors and eminent university lecturers were debarred from making any statement to the media. It was only Devasiri and his loud-mouthed media spokesman who were permitted to talk to the press. This was to silence any lecturer who wished to speak sincerely. Most of the lecturers who took part in the protest march only wanted a salary increase and not demand six percent of the GDP for education. The FUTA demand is a shameful attempt to win support for a salary increase.

The manner in which Devasiri poured scorn on undergraduates at a recent television interview leaves much to be desired. He had said that those who get through the A/L examination and qualify for university admission are not up to the requisite standard. He even went to the extent of saying that the current undergraduates are not fit to be students in the universities. This is a downright insult to all university students and they should challenge the FUTA chief for making such sweeping statements. It is an open secret how FUTA coffers receive lavish funding from INGOs, Opposition politicians and certain international organisations which are hell-bent on a regime change in Sri Lanka.

At the same time, most of the top FUTA officials have close links to either INGOs or the JVP. The handful of opportunist academics with a different agenda is taking most of the lecturers for a good ride.The lecturers must take cognizance that they are not super professionals and demand preferential treatment. We cannot place a monetary value for the incomparable services rendered by some university lecturers who could not be bought over by INGO funding. Unfortunately, these honest dons have no place in the FUTA which is being dominated by some INGO and JVP breakaway activists.