Too few Tamil speakers in Sri Lankan Government service February 14, 2006
Posted by nemtu in News.trackback
The Tamil-speaking population in Sri Lanka comprises Sri Lankan Tamils, Indian Origin Tamils and Tamil Speaking Muslims. Together they are 26 per cent of the island’s population.
But in the 9,00,000-strong public service, Tamil-speakers are just 8.3 per cent. The rest are Sinhala-speakers.
Out of the 36,031 employees in the Police Department, 477 are Tamil-speakers.
Wellawatte, a suburb of Colombo, is an overwhelmingly Tamil area, with 21,417 of its residents out of a total population of 29,302, being Tamil speaking. But in the Wellawatte police station, out of the 156 personnel, only 6 are Tamil speaking.
The Sri Lankan armed forces are also almost completely Sinhala or Sinhala speaking.
There is such a shortage of Tamil-speaking senior and competent officers that in the predominantly Tamil-speaking North Eastern districts, officers are asked to stay on after retirement.
There are Government Agents and Assistant Government Agents (counterparts of the Indian District Collectors) who keep serving well past their official retirement age.
Yeah, this is the sad reality and it seems impossible to change all this.
Anyway.. great to see a Tamil-Muslim page on the internet. I have been searching for something similar to this page all over the Net.. and finally found one..
- sakthi from Denmark