SL Govt. fails to implement State language policy- Minister

[TamilNet, Saturday, 29 May 2004, 17:27 GMT]
"In the sixty thousand-member strong Sri Lanka Police force only about 1600 are Tamil speaking. Several ministries and government departments are not implementing the official language policy of the 1978 constitution. I will make my ministry as a model to other ministries in this regard," said the Sri Lanka's new Constitutional Affairs Minister Mr.D.E.W.Gunasekara after assuming duties at his ministry office in Kollupitya Friday.

According to State language policy of the 1978 Constitution, Sinhalese and Tamil are official languages and English language is link language.

The leader of the Sri Lanka Communist Party Mr. Gunasekara further said that there was no proper mechanism to monitor the implementation of the Constitution other than an occasional arguing of a fundamental right case by a rich litigants in law court.

He said there is no use of a constitution -whatever its type- if the people do not benefit by it. "We have experience of all previous Constitutions. Some time they solved problems while at other times they created problems," said Mr. Gunasekara who was once the Commissioner of Official Languages Commission.

The present Constitution of Sri Lanka has created several problems for the poor and there is urgent in Sri Lanka for a new Constitution, Minister added.

His ministry would immediate steps to implement the Official Languages Policy, Minister said.