ENTER Mahinda: President Decides To Relocate Weliweriya Hayleys; But Plant To Be Reopened Pending Relocation

August 13, 2013

Engaging for the first time on the Weliweriya clashes that left three people dead and over 20 wounded, President Mahinda Rajapaksa decided that the glove manufacturing plant residents in the area are accusing of contaminating the ground water will be relocated to a BOI zone.

In the interim however, Venigross Ltd, a subsidiary of Dipped Products PLC, owned by the Hayleys group will be reopened to permit management to meet existing orders. The factory shut its doors at the end of July after water demonstrations in the area reached fever pitch, a decision that was cemented following a meeting between the monk leading the Weliweriya protests, residents and company officials at the Defence Ministry on August 1.

Taking a stand for the first time since the armed forces called in to crush the demonstration in the Gampaha District town allegedly fired on unarmed protestors, President Rajapaksa held discussions with Rathupaswala area residents and relevant officials on the water crisis at the Presidential Secretariat last afternoon.

The President had ordered the relocation of the Hayleys owned plant that has been in the eye of the storm in Weliweriya to a investment zone, even if water tests found that the effluents from the factory was not the source of the contamination, a media release by the Presidential Media Unit said.

If the factory is found to be the source of contamination, the plant would be shut down permanently, the President promised as part of his “solution package” to Weliweriya residents. Read More

The Things Of Nature And The Nature Of Things

By Arjuna Seneviratne -August 13, 2013 

Arjuna Seneviratne

No.No one can justify saying that nature is unkind. In utmost kindness to this world of ours, it concentrated and hid from the regions of life on its crust, three things, namely, about 400 billion cubic meters of oil, about 300 billion tons of methane and most of its deposits of metals and silicon. In short, much of its potential and kinetic energy which, unleashed, could destroy the conditions required for life was sequestered where it can do the smallest damage.

In the habitable regions of the world, nature behaved in an opposite way. Instead of concentrating anything, it distributed everything, ensuring that the largest possible footprint on earth could sustain the continuity of life.  Willy-nilly, life became and prospered, stabilizing, balancing and recharging the inhabited parts of the planet through incredibly complex systems of material and creature cycling.

Human beings who used this system in the not too distant past understood the fine thread on which this balance hung, clearly recognized the pivotal part that distribution and sharing of life resources played in it and engineered their own life-systems to highly sensitized engagement of the human-environment interface.  Never letting human societies to get ahead of themselves, deeply in awe of and in instinctive recognition of the fact that they could not possibly fathom the interplays of nature, humankind managed the subtle task of harmonious-coexistence of ever growing populations with those of the natural world that they had to use in order to live. Read More