Non-Implementation of Tamil as an official language in provinces outside North and East
By Chandani Kirinde
While opinion remains deeply divided in the country about the full implementation of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, the recognition of Tamil alongside Sinhala as an official language guaranteed by the same constitutional amendment remains largely confined to paper with several key areas in the government sector lagging behind in executing the Official Language policy.
Lack of resources, finances, trained personnel and unawareness have contributed to the slow pace of implementation of the language policy despite attempts by the government to correct the deficiency. With the end of hostilities and the opening of more public services in the north and east, the comprehensive implementation of the language policy seems more plausible as well as timely.
“The ethnic problem was largely due to the Tamil people feeling alienated particularly over the language issue and lack of equal access to the public service. It has become an urgent need to implement the language policy, says Chairman of the Official Languages Commission Raja Collure. A recent study done by the Commission covering a population of over 3.5 million of which over 1.1 million were Tamil speaking people living outside the northern and eastern provinces found that of the 6,626 public officials of all grades working there, only 627 or 9.5 per cent were proficient in Tamil.
A similar study was conducted in the northern and eastern provinces to ascertain the availability of public officials proficient in Sinhala. Of the over 1.5 million population surveyed of which the Sinhala speaking population was a little over 365,000, it was found that only 98 or 18.1 per cent of the total of 540 public officials serving, were proficient in Sinhala.
“The language issues affect both communities but it is the Tamil speaking people who are more affected as they live in large numbers outside the north and east and this includes Muslims and up country Tamils who have no proper knowledge of Sinhala, “Mr.Collure explained.
Under the terms of the Constitution, Sinhala is the language of administration in all the provinces other than the Northern and Eastern provinces where Tamil is used. The same policy is applicable as the language of the courts in the country.
The Government issued two circulars in early 2007 pertaining to the implementation of the language policy, one offering enhanced incentive payments for public servants acquiring proficiency in both Official Languages and another making it necessary for all officers recruited to the public/ provincial public service with effect from July 1, 2007 to acquire proficiency in the other Official Language within a period of five years in addition to the Official Language through which they enter the service.
Nevertheless the incentive payments ranging between Rs 15,000 to Rs 25, 000 as well as denial of increments to public officials who fail to obtain the required proficiency within the stipulated period of time have not encouraged many to take the language issue seriously with the numbers sitting the proficiency tests conducted by the Official Languages Department highly unsatisfactory.
Since July 2007, the Police Department has recruited nearly 12,000 personnel of all ranks while the Health sector and the Public Administration sectors have recruited around 8,000 each but only around 2,100 sat the last Language Proficiency tests conducted in 2008.
The situation with regard to Translators too is dire with less than 130 in the Translator Service of whom only 28 are proficient in Sinhala/Tamil, 82 in Sinhala/English and 21 in English /Tamil. Here too the number proficient in the two Official Languages is extremely poor, he said.
“Our fear is that these circulars will become a dead letter unless they are adhered to strictly. It is the obligation of the state to provide for the functioning of the language policy,” the Chairman of the Commission said.
While the Commission and the Department of Official Languages are the main government institutions empowered with monitoring supervising and training to ensure compliance with the Official Languages policy, the lack of funding particularly for the training programmes has restricted the services they can render.
“The provincial councils too are expected to play a role in the implementation of the Official Languages policy but their attitudes are very unsatisfactory. The different departments too need to get money from the government and implement the policy on their own as we have fewer funds,” Mr.Collure said. With many new police stations opening up in the north after the defeat of the LTTE, it has become an even more pressing need to train police personnel who can work in both languages, the Chairman of the Commission said.
While all recruitment to the public service is merit based and no language based recruitment can be done, he recommends that an auxiliary service be set up from where the necessary personnel can be drawn to serve in offices where their services are needed until the levels of proficiency among the majority of public officials reaches a satisfactory level and they are able to discharge their duties in both Official Languages. [courtesy: sundaytimes.lk]
6 Comments
"A similar study was conducted in the northern and eastern provinces to ascertain the availability of public officials proficient in Sinhala. Of the over 1.5 million population surveyed of which the Sinhala speaking population was a little over 365,000, it was found that only 98 or 18.1 per cent of the total of 540 public officials serving, were proficient in Sinhala" What about
military and Police forces?
I would like to add to your 'outside North and East','outside Sri Lanka',those people in the latter category are as frustrated and disgruntled and feel alianated when the Lanka missions continue to disregard language and tend to address them in English. This applies to Sinhala and Tamil and more so I think to Tamils. The affected people are subjected to inconvenience and delays as they have to go after someone who knows a smattering of English. The missions argue that they will communicate in the language of the initial inquiry which tends to be English very often. This is because most believe that things go faster that way. Can the authorities select the language through the NAMES of the inquirers? If so well and good. Another argument the officials pose is regarding resourses. In Lanka no sympathy is forthcoming for this aspect 'cos the tendency is to think that those especially in the Western countrie speak English. Many of these countries do not use English. Even in the Englis speaking countries the lakans tend to speak their own language these days. Can this be rectified to benefit the diasphora the Sinhalas and more so the Tamils.Most Sri Lankans abhor their foreign missions and perhaps if action is taken to rectify this anomaly things might go in the right direction.
Kind regards
Chandra Abeynayake
It is a Pointless Exercise to Make the TAMIL LANGUAGE have Equal Parity to SINHALA in Sri Lanka and Even More So Pointless in the South. While Tamil is recognized as an Official Language, it is practiced by less than 20% of the population. Having it on the Money and Official documents and the TV & Radio Stations in the South is MORE THAN ENOUGH. This is a Simple Case of MAJORITY RULE and it happens and is practiced in EVERY SINGLE COUNTRY on this planet. Tamils simply cannot expect it to be different in Sri Lanka. Those that have expectation of the Sinhalese are being Impractical, Unreasonable, and thoroughly DELUSIONAL if they think that it would be any different.
Thanks Chandani Kirinde.
chabdani says,“The ethnic problem was largely due to the Tamil people feeling alienated particularly over the language issue and lack of equal access to the public service. It has become an urgent need to implement the language policy, says Chairman of the Official Languages Commission Raja Collure".
Further chandani says it is due to non implementation of 13th Amendment to the constitution.
Why the Chairman of the Official Language Commission failed to mention the 16th Amendment to the Constitution which had made Sinhala the Language of Administration in the South and Tamil as Language of Administration in the Northern and Eastern Provinces.
The Department of Official Languages and the Official Language Commission were established for the implementation of the Language Policy.
Everybody knows how the Department of Official Languages terrorized the Tamil speaking Public Servants and vigorously implemented Sinhala only during the 50s,and 60s.
Why that is the Department of Official Languages could not exercise the same enthusiasm for the implementation of Tamil as Language of administration, but come out with various silly excuses?.
They will come out with excuses such as lack of funds, lack of type writers and lack of translators……………………………
They will say only Rs one million is allocated by the Government.
If there is a will there is a way!
In the days of Globalization, the type writers have become obsolete and a single computer could work in all three languages.
If you are willing to take sufficient number of Tamil medium officers and post them throughout the Island, they will study Sinhala within a few months and work bilingually and solve the language problem within a short time.
Any one interested in solving the language problem must conduct massive awareness campaign about the 16thAmendment to the Constitution and the Department of Official languages and the official Language Commission should lead the way for the implementation of Tamil as they did earlier to Sinhala to foster national unity and solve the Language problem once and for all.
Propagate 16A!
Not only there is a problem of "Non-Implementation of Tamil as an official language in provinces outside North and East", there is also a problem of non sinhalese students' parents chosing or sending their children to Sinhalese medium schools for economic benefit. These schools do not give importance to English as a second language or Tamil as a third language. Unfortunately most of these students after school do not find good employment within Srilanka and many of them end up as domestic helps or workers in other Asian countries or in Middle East.
I met an employer who was born and bred in SEA and an Tamil who is effectively trilingual in English, Tamil and Malay recently. He said his domestic help and some his friends' are from Srilanka's Kandy, Matale,& Dambulle, and none of them are fluent in Tamil or English and only in Sinhalese with poor spoken Tamil. Now all of these employers are teaching their maids to learn to speak Tamil and English and also learn to write too.
It is sad that people like DEW Gunasekera, Thondaman, Chandrasekaran & others being Ministers is unable to implement the basic language rights of these SL Tamil Citizens who can go up the ladder economically and socially and be proud of themselves and their country.
The govt.'s insincerity in implementing Tamil on equal par with Sinhala was demonstrated during a press conferenc way back in 1995.
Constitutional Affairs minister Prof. G.L.Pieris announced rather pompously that all govt. circulars would be provided in both Tamil and Sinhala.
The press releases handed out to the journalists present were only in Sinhala and English. When this journalist asked the prof. why they could not have provided Tamil press releases, media minister, the late Dharmasiri Senanayake quipped, " Surely the Tamil journalists can understand English.".
Then to stop further queries Media minister asked that we be provided with refreshments!!.
Simple gestures like this have thwarted the issue of parity to Tamil as official language of Sri Lanka.
The govt. is increasingly gearing itself towards a Sinhala Buddhist nationalism and this was proved by the IDPs imprisoned in welfare camps for indefinite period thereby subjugating an indigenous population against their will Moreover, the govt. under Mahinda is doing all it can to stop international media and humanitarian organisations to investigate the last days of the so called war on the LTTE where gross human rights violations against the Tamil took place.