34 PLOTE cadres for Jaffna militia

[TamilNet, Saturday, 17 April 1999, 12:07 GMT]
The PLOTE, a para military organisation working with the Sri Lanka Army (SLA), submitted to Sri Lanka's ministry of Defence the names of 34 cadres today for appointment as security guards to local government members in Jaffna.

A PLOTE spokesman in Jaffna said that the 34 cadres will work as security guards for 16 local government members of the organisation in Jaffna.

He said that 62 candidates of the PLOTE were elected to local government bodies in Jaffna early last year but 46 had resigned since then.

The PLOTE has nominated new persons to fill the vacant seats but none have been appointed yet because the Commissioner of elections has not ratified and gazetted the new names the spokesman added.

The MOD gave an ultimatum to the PLOTE, EPRLF, EPDP and the TELO recently for submitting lists of cadres to be appointed as security guards to local government members in Jaffna. The cadres will be armed with assault rifles and officially designated as security assistants by the MOD.

The ultimatum was issued after the groups failed to provide lists of cadres the MOD had asked for on several occasions.

The Ministry said that today would the last date for sending in the lists. Most groups failed to comply with the MOD's request to submit names as they did not have adequate cadres to be made security guards and because the majority of their local body members had resigned.