Don't put the ball in other's court - PM

Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickramanayake was addressing a gathering at the Colombo University - Institute of Human Resource Advancement - Diploma Awarding Ceremony recently on Drug Abuse Management Studies in collaboration with the Dangerous Drugs Control Board (NDDCB).

Following are excerpts:

Addiction to harmful addictive material takes a heavy toll of the younger generation, the most energetic and hardworking of the nation. The nation has already heavily invested on them, they are the beneficiaries of public funded "free" education, public funded "free" health services, and a number of other subsidies - all done expecting their positive contribution to the country. But, ultimately all would go down the drain to the benefit of the international and local terrorists, and other local anti-social elements, who do not respect the national and international rules and regulations. The victims do not have the capacity to understand that the disastrous process they have got involved in, will definitely destroy their lives. The national wealth of the country gets drained away - with the involvement of local anti-social traitorous elements - to other countries and partly to the terrorists.

If we consider the present situation of over-crowding in prisons of Sri Lanka, it would reveal how threatening is the growing effect of the harmful addictive material/drugs on the young human resource of our country. According to the government official statistics released by the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board in 2006, 66% of prisoners of Sri Lanka are connected to drugs and alcoholic products related crimes, that number is more than 20,000. From this number, 13,000 prisoners are connected to crimes related to hard drugs such as heroin. A number larger than this remains not in prisons, but among us as free individuals. A person who is heavily addicted to drugs spends around Rs. 1,000 per day to purchase hard drugs 20,000 such people would spend Rs. 20 million per day in Sri Lanka! That amounts to spending Rs. 7,300 million per year (Rs. 7.3 billion per year) for hard drugs.

Around seven billion rupees is lost from the country in one year - this is only the financial cost. How much we lose because the drug addicts are also members of young energetic work force? Time and money spent on handling drug related crimes, rehabilitation activities, maintaining prisons, and suffering of affected families cannot be estimated. We have to understand that money is drained out to foreign countries, local and foreign terrorists, and at the same time young energetic lives of Sri Lanka get destroyed beyond recovery. In addition, all forms of social crimes and corruption connected to these illegal drugs and liquor thrive.

Protecting young lives

What can we do to save the huge amount money, Rs. 7,300 million (Rs. 7.3 billion) annually wasted by 20,000 young people on drugs to destroy their lives? Also, how to save the large amount of money spent on drug control and rehabilitation of addicts in overcrowded prisons and rehabilitation centers? Sri Lankan government has already taken action to immediately correct the present pathetic situation under the "end to dope" concept. The Parliament approved Act No. 27 of 2006 for the establishment of the National Authority on Tobacco and Alcohol, which will come into effect within the next month. This will take action to control cigarettes and alcoholic liquor use and its promotion, as these harmful addictive-materials are considered to be the entry points for addiction to illegal drugs. In addition, several other related legal proposals have been presented to the Parliament for approval and these are required for effective control of illegal dangerous drugs/harmful addictive-material.

The International war against dangerous drugs/harmful addictive material cannot be won only by implementing the law. As I mentioned previously we all have to get armed with knowledge and intelligence to win this war. In simple terms, people, that is our human resource, have to develop their capability to control themselves. We have to develop our self-esteem and our own personality so that we may not get attracted to harmful addictive material. We should be intelligent enough not to get cheated by commercial advertisements. The Sri Lankan government sees the development of the country to mean the advancement of its human resource to the level that they can act and control themselves so as to be economically and socially productive, having advanced in, and benefited from new knowledge and improved intelligence.

The University level education in Sri Lanka is more or less fully provided by the state using money of the people, paid in different forms of taxes. All the local Universities are depended on public funding. Even the street beggars as consumers of available products contribute, at least minimally, to the public fund. Although, all the people including the beggars of this country contribute to maintain the Sri Lankan Universities, only 7% of the students sitting the highly competitive GCE (A/L) examination is given a university education. As I mentioned earlier, this is only 14% of those qualifying for a university education. It is strange that the majority of this 14% on being value-added and qualified as graduates, cannot find jobs that suit their qualifications. Some graduates leave the country temporarily or otherwise, and thus making our public investments meaningless.

What is the fate of the 86% who qualified to enter to a university but failed to gain entry? The government has no capability to provide university education to all the candidates at the expense of taxpayers' public money. Above all, the government cannot put an additional burden on the public. Is it justifiable that all the parents pay taxes and support the education of only 7% while their children cannot enter a university in Sri Lanka?

Do the 86% of youth that qualified to enter a university but failed to gain admission have the freedom and right to buy university level education in Sri Lanka? The answer is "yes", but not for Sri Lankan Degrees from Sri Lankan Universities! They have to buy the education from foreign universities directly or through their numerous agents or agencies widely scattered in major urban locations. In contrast, for them only a very few Sri Lankan ICT and some technology degree programmes exist locally. Parents, who have no right to buy Sri Lankan University education from any source for their children, continue to contribute to maintain the state Universities. In the circumstances, they are forced to drain their money in large scale to other countries in the hope of getting a university education. How many parents can afford to do this?

The non-availability of Sri Lankan university education for the vast majority of qualified youth shows the under-developed status of the country which is reflected on its people. It is strange that there is no dialogue within the Sri Lankan universities on the fate of the 86% who were qualified to enter but were deprived the exercise of their right. This becomes somewhat strange despite the availability of a number of university courses on many fields such as, human rights, economics, development studies, education, international relations, modern management systems, etc. We lose Rupees 12 billion per year along with the accompanying capable educated young ones, mainly because the country does not offer choices and sufficient freedom to purchase local university education, with financial assistance or otherwise. Aren't we fully responsible for this unfortunate situation, because we pretend not seeing it, or not understanding the realities?

University courses

It is very important to know that the second highest foreign income of Australia and New Zealand is from business in education. The highest income of USA is earned from "knowledge business". These global developments are associated with the "knowledge economy". We cannot be blind to globalised developments of other countries, nor can we be indifferent to them. We have to learn from and adapt meaningfully. We know that Sri Lankan universities still provide a very high standard of education in some areas, especially in technology related fields.

It is unwise and useless to put the blame on foreign forces saying that they extract our national resources in different ways. We have to understand that they are involved in their businesses and other commercial activities concerned only on making long-term profits. We need to understand what the real meaning of so called "foreign aids" given to us. These "aids" are long term "petty" investments and other forms of their business promotion strategies. We should improve our knowledge to understand the reality and not be misled by these seemingly attractive business promotions with hidden agendas. This situation, where "freedom" for education is not given to the majority while "dependant" attitudes are allowed to stay, is incorrectly called as the "free-education"!