Batticaloa to be declared backward district in education
[TamilNet, Sunday, 26 September 2004, 16:13 GMT]
Sri Lanka University Grants Commission (UGC) agreed to a request made by the Batticaloa district Tamil National Alliance (TNA) parliamentarians to declare the Batticaloa district as a backward area in education. The UGC also decided to submit a report to the Sri Lanka Government to get Cabinet approval for the decision, education sources said.
Batticaloa district parliamentarians and academicians have been agitating that their district should be declared a backward area in the sphere of education thus ensuring low cutout marks for the varsity admission. Also, Batticaloa district has not been provided with updated educational facilities on par with other developed districts in the educational sphere, sources said. Currently the Batticaloa district is considered to at the same level as Colombo and other developed districts thus forcing the students of the district to obtain higher marks for varsity admission, education sources said. A delegation of Batticaloa TNA parliamentarians comprising Messrs Joseph Pararajasingham, P.Kanagasabai, K.Pathmanathan, S.Jeyananthamoorthy,
P.Ariyanethran and Ms K.Thangeswari met with the Chairman of the UGC Mr.P.R.R.N.Mendis Friday at the UGC office. UGC Deputy Chairman Mr.C.C.Ratnayake, Higher Education Ministry Secretary Mr.K.C.T.C. Nandasena and Professor Hoole also attended the discussions. Decision also was taken at the discussion to establish a medical faculty in the East University. The proposed medical faculty will function starting from next academic year. A sum of 32 million rupees would be allocated for the establishment of the medical faculty, UGC sources said.
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