Union demands Tamil GA for Trinco

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 24 January 2001, 20:12 GMT]
Samastha Lanka Government General Employees Union has requested the President to take steps to appoint a Tamil civil servant as the Government Agent (GA) of the Trincomalee district. A resolution to this effect was unanimously passed at the fourth annual general meeting of the Trincomalee branch of the union held last week.

The Trincomalee district has had no Tamil or Muslim GA in its two hundred -year old civil administration. British civil servants were appointed as GAs of the district during the colonial rule. Thereafter every government that came to power appointed Sinhalese as GAs of the Trincomalee district although Tamil speaking people are in majority. This practice still continues.

The Tamil speaking population in the Trincomalee district continue to outnumber the Sinhalese, even after the implementation of a series of state aided colonization schemes.

The Samastha Lanka Government General Employees Union has brought to the notice of the President that Tamils in the Trincomalee district have lost their parliamentary representation at the last general election. Tamils in the district are now without an elected representative to put forward their grievances in the parliament. Therefore it is high time for the government to take steps to appoint a Tamil as the GA of the district, said the Union.

Meanwhile hundreds of Tamils held a protest campaign in front of the office of the Kalmunai Divisional Sub Office Wednesday demanding that it should be upgraded to the status of a full-fledged Divisional Secretariat.

The Federation of Rural Development Societies organized this protest campaign.

The Public Administration Ministry created a Divisional Sub Office for Tamils living in Kalmunai area in 1989. Later in 1993 the government decided to upgrade the sub office to a Divisional Secretariat status. But the cabinet decision in this regard has not been implemented to date.

Kalmunai Tamil division consists of 29 Grama Sevaka Niladharis units. The population is around 30 thousand with a voter strength of about 16 thousand.

Now Tamils in Kalmunai demand that the Cabinet decision taken in 1993 to upgrade the sub office to a full Divisional Secretariat, be implemented forthwith without delay.