Dew Gunasekara, Minister of Constitutional Affairs and National Integration, told the media how shameful the implementation of the official languages in this country is.

Minister Gunasekara stated since that more than 800000 government servants in service are unable to transact business in Sinhala , English or Tamil, the government administration has been brought to disrepute.

Minister Gunasekara further pointed out that 60% of the Tamil people living outside the north-east are unable to do official transaction in Tamil.

A survey by the Ministry of Public Administration reveals that in more than 50% of the Predesha Secretariats, there isn’t even one Tamil officer and this has caused serious problems to the Tamil people.

At least a minimum of 200,000 government servants out of the 800,000 in service must be fluent in Tamil and English to perform their duties.

Sinhala government servants must learn Tamil and Tamil government servants must learn Sinhala. Minister Gunasekara has stated that the government servants must be given salary increase on the basis of their proficiency in these languages.

There have been many hurdles at the level of executives in the implementation of the government official languages. There needs to be courageous decisions and actions at the political level to make this a reality.

An English translation of the Editorial in Thinakkural, a Tamil daily, based in Colombo

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