"Sinhala Only" election materials irk NorthEast officials

[TamilNet, Friday, 20 February 2004, 17:54 GMT]
NorthEast officials responsible for conducting the forthcoming elections are irked at their Colombo counterparts for sending instructions and other election materials in "Sinhala only," thereby causing procedural snarl at the NorthEast election offices, officials in Jaffna said. Neither English copies nor Tamil translations accompany the received election material, according the same sources.

The electoral districts of Jaffna, Vavuniya, Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Amparai are in the in the northeast province and eighty percent of the voters in the province are Tamil speaking.

The districts of Mannar, Mullaitivu and Vavuniya come under the Vavuniya election office. Killinochchi district comes under the Jaffna election office.

With the dissolution of parliament and fixing of the date for the general election, all district election offices are working around the clock.

However, Tamil speaking officials in the northeast district election offices complained that Sinhala only circulars sent to them from Colombo Department of Elections, have made their task extremely difficult, Tamil sources said.

Employees competent to translate Sinhala circulars have not been posted to election offices in the northeast, the officials further complained