Lack of Funds Hampers National Co-Existence Ministry
by Easwaran Rutnam-Monday, April 11, 2016
Lack of adequate funds is hampering work at the Ministry of National Co-existence, Dialogue and Official Languages.
The Minister in charge, Mano Ganesan, said that the lack of funds for the subjects of national coexistence and official languages “scare” him.
The Ministry was established after the new government took office with the promise of ensuring the issues between the communities are addressed.
However, while addressing the issue of reconciliation, the government is bent on developing the country and boosting the economy.“The government needs to bring material successes to the podium urgently. So the ministries building bridges, houses, highways are prioritised. We are a developing nation. That’s understandable under the normal conditions. But we are just after a bloody war and started to build a new nation. The scars and suspicions are there. So the lack of funds for the subjects of national coexistence and official languages scare me. Therefore I am looking towards the international donor agencies who support cohesion, coexistence, reconciliation and language policy implementations in Sri Lanka,” the Minister said when asked by The Sunday Leader about the funding issue.
Ganesan’s ministry is critical because it handles two key subjects, coexistence and official languages, both interlinked.
The successful implementation of the official languages policy (OLP)
would be the preamble to ethnic coexistence and coexistence is the prelude to a political solution.
“While my colleagues build material infrastructures, I am building hearts and minds of the peoples. The basic truth is that, the material development will last only if the hearts and minds of the people are strongly placed within the national coexistence road map. Sinhala, Tamil and English languages have obtained references in the constitution of Sri Lanka. Constitutional clauses of Sri Lanka recognises Sinhala and Tamil as (i) official (ii) administrative (iii) national languages and English language as the Link language. That’s fine. But it remains only in the papers today,” Ganesan said.
