Sri Lanka Minister of Health Pavithra Wanniarachchi and Army Commander Major General Shavendra Silva have not still responded to the Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) trade union action in Sampathnuwara hospital in Welioya in Mullaithivu district. A spokesman of the GMOA told that the trade union action continued.
The two medical officers, the doctor in charge of the rental unit and the dental surgeon do not report to work in this rural hospital for about a week now. The people in this remote area are suffering immensely as a result of the trade union action of the GMOA.
On October 28, Sri Lanka Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) complained to the Minister of Health Pavithra Wanniarachchi and Army Commander Shavendra Silva regarding the death threat against the head of Sampathnuwara District Hospital by a senior Army officer.
According to the letter dated 28 October 2020, sent to the Minister of Health, Brigadier K.K.S. Parakum of Mechanized Infantry Regiment had visited Sampathnuwara District Hospital to discuss converting the hospital into a COVID-19 treatment centre and abused the Head of the Institution and other medical officers using racist and derogatory words. The words include anti-Tamil racist language that called the doctors terrorists. As a trade union action, GMOA has withdrawn the doctors from the service in Sampathnuwara District Hospital.
Sri Lanka Government Medical Officers' Association (GMOA) complained to the Minister of Health Pavithra Wanniarachchi and Army Commander Shavendra Silva regarding the death threat against the head of Sampathnuwara District Hospital by a senior Army officer.
According to the letter dated 28 October 2020, sent to the Minister of Health, Brigadier K.K.S. Parakum of Mechanized Infantry Regiment had visited Sampathnuwara District Hospital in Welioya and abused the Head of the Institution and other medical officers using racist and derogatory words. The words include anti-Tamil racist language that called the doctors terrorists.
As a trade union action, GMOA has withdrawn the doctors from the service in Sampathnuwara District Hospital.
Full text of the letter:
Government Medical Officers Association 28.10.2020
Hom. Pavithra Wanniarchchi, Minister of Health, Ministry of Health, Colombo.
Dear Madam
Unacceptable behaviour of Brigadier K. K. S. Parakum
It is sad to inform you that Brigadier K. K. S. Parakum had visited district hospital Sampathnuwara and abused head of the institution and other medical officers පර දෙමළා, ප්රභාකරන්, ත්රස්තවාදීන්, තොපි මරණවා. මේක මගේ ඒ්රියා එක [ Bloody Tamil, Prabhakaran, Terrorists, I will kill you all, This is my area – SLB]
We remind that the era during the war all our doctors treated the military with dignity to ensure the moral and medical backup to armed forces and police to combat terrorism in our motherland.
However the behaviour of brigadier K. K. S. Parakum has failed to the expected standards of disciplinary of our armed forces and fail to ensure the dignity of doctors and fellow citizens.
Here we attached our communication to Lieutenant General Shavendra Silva on 26. 10. 2020 for necessary action.
Since the situation at DH Sampathnuwara is not rectified we are compelled to withdraw the services at DH Sampathnuwara as trade union measures considering the safety of our members.
We request your good offices’ to take necessary measures to ensure safe working conditions of this institution for the best interest of the patients.
Thank you, Yours faithfully Dr Senal Fernando Secretary
(July 22, 2009 - Lanka Polity) A mass scale land encroaching is reported from areas like Welioya (Manalaru), Kokkuthudai, Kokilai etc. in the northeastern terrain of Sri Lanka. Civilian activities were restricted in these areas for a long period of time due to the fighting between the Army and the Tamil Tiger rebels that claimed for a Tamil homeland in the Northern and Eastern Provinces of Sri Lanka. However, following the Army’s victory over the Tamil Tigers, demining and rapid development is taking place in the area and ambitious and mostly well-to-do Sinhala people in Welioya and Padaviya colonies are reportedly grabbing land.
When we asked about this from the Residential Project Manager of Welioya Mahaweli zone P. G. Dayananda, he rejected that encroaching is taking place. He said that the residents of the area are given permission to cultivate in state land. The residents of Welioya pay Rs. 750 per acre and the other persons pay Rs. 1000 per acre to state as tax. Permission is limited to five acres and only for the coming Maha season, he said. He said that the expected outcome would be paddy harvest worth of Rs. 30 to50 million in the coming season. He emphasized that this permission would not be material for any future claim to land according to the agreement.
However, our observations pointed to the fact that new use of state land has not limited to the system declared by the Mahaweli Authority and encroaching that is taking place is not in full control of the authorities. There are reports that some individuals are grabbing huge lands of the size of ten to twenty acres and even bulldozers are used in clearing jungles.
(July 14, 2009) The Director General of Sri Lanka Mahaweli Authority Dharmasiri de Alwis has told the state-owned Dinamina newspaper today that 2500 families will be settled in Nedunkarni in Mullaithivu district under the Welioya project of the Mahaweli L-zone. Each family will be granted one acre for paddy cultivation, half an acre for coconut growing and one acre for the home garden.
Nedunkarni is a Tamil dominated area centered by a small town and the residents are now internally displaced in camps in Vavuniya. Dinamina report does not mention anything about the ethnicity of the settlers in the new colonies.
We consider this as a very sensitive political issue that should be handled with utmost care. Mahaweli Authority should not be the sole competent authority in this regard.
The idea that the Sinhala invaders are colonizing their land is one of the basic tools manipulated by the Tamil nationalists to fuel the passion on the homeland among Tamils. This phenomenon presented as Sinhala colonization was vehemently resisted by Tamils.
In the early colonization process, the traditional dwellers of the lands as such in Galoya etc. were integrated to the new colonies. The ethnic ratio among the settlers was also considered. But this situation gradually changed later.
In the late 1950s, Pihimbiyagollewe Dhammaloka Thero, a young Buddhist monk who had settled in Padaviya blocked Tamils being settled in the Eastern parts of the Padaviya colony with the auspices of the Sinhala politicians. Entire Padaviya settlement was tuened to a Sinhala colony and later in 1980s the traditional Tamil villagers like Thennamaravadi in the Eastern coast off Padaviya were also wiped out.
Through this process, a wall of Sinhala villages was erected in between the Northern and Eastern Provinces. It can be observed that the colonization process in the age of the D.S. Senanayaka aimed at undermining the separatist trends among the minorities. But the late colonization were attempts to spread Sinhala chauvinism.
Herman Malinga Bandara, a civil servant engaged in colonization in Welioya has clearly hinted in his book ‘For a sovereign State' that Sinhala chauvinist interests were behind the setting up of Welioya colony in the northeastern parts of Sri Lanka.
Before Welioya colony was set up, this area was dominated by the farms like Dollar, Kent and Ceylon Theaters Farm etc. that were set up in long leased crown land. An NGO called Gandhiyam Movement had settled some Tamils that had been displaced from the southern parts of the island due to ethnic violence in the abandoned land of these fams. Militant groups like PLOTE led by Uma Maheswaran were also active among these displaced persons. Ill-famous Dollar and Kent Farm massacres of Sinhala settlers and the retaliatory massacre of Tamil villagers in nearby Othiyamale were a beginning of a new era of bloodshed in this zone that took hundreds of lives of Sinhala and Tamil peasants.
Welioya was later earmarked as Mahaweli L-zone. Under the original plan, 39,000 hectare land belonged to Anuradhapura, Vavuniya and Mullaithivu administrative districts were divided into six zones. They include Sampathnuwara, Janakapura, Kokilai, Nedunkarni and Nayaru areas but only two zones were developed so far, say the Mahaweli Authority. The other zones could not be developed due to the unsafe conditions. There are settlements in Nikaweva, Ehetugasweva, Kiribbanweva, Janakapura , Kalyanipura, New Monaraweva and New Gajabapura areas. People were settled in some other areas of Gajabapura, Monaraweva, Helambaweva, Kambiliweva, Konweva, Veheraweva and parts of Kalyanipura but they vacated those areas due to security concerns.
Mahaweli Authority says that 5000 families were settled in Welioya area during the past 22 years. 3364 of them were settled in legally allocated land and the others were squatters. They were leaving and coming back time to time due to security issues.
