Sri Lanka Police chief urged to stop drug smuggling in Mannar

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 September 2004, 13:10 GMT]
Mannar Bishop Rt. Rev. Rayappu Joseph Saturday urged Sri Lanka's Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr. Indra Silva, to urgently start a special Police division to curb rampant heroin smuggling in the district. Mr.Indra Silva is the first IGP of Sri Lanka to visit Mannar in 30 years. He paid a courtsey call on the Bishop during an official visit to Mannar Saturday. Mannar has emerged as a major transit point for drug smuggling from India to Sri Lanka after Colombo signed a cease fire agreement with the Liberation Tigers in 2002.
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Marine Technology teacher shortage in Jaffna

[TamilNet, Saturday, 18 September 2004, 03:49 GMT]
The Association of Marine Technology Teachers in Jaffna district Friday requested Jaffna district parliamentarians to take immediate steps to appoint more teachers in the North-East schools to teach subjects related to marine technology, Jaffna district secretariat sources said.


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Pre-school opened in Nedunkerni

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 15 September 2004, 16:08 GMT]
A pre-school constructed by the Nedunkerny Development Rehabilitation Organization (NDRO) with the financial assistance provided by the Siththi Vinayagar Kovil Society in Kerning, Denmark and sponsored by the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization and Pre-school Development Organization was declared open Wednesday morning.
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Illegal settlements to be dismantled in Vavuniya

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 14 September 2004, 14:13 GMT]
Sri Lankan government officials Tuesday began surveying state lands in the environs of Vavuniya town on which 296 families have encroached illegally. Some encroachments on the catchment areas of local reservoirs were backed by paramilitaries during the war, officials said.
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Chief Justice opens Trincomalee court complex

[TamilNet, Monday, 13 September 2004, 00:19 GMT]
Sri Lanka's Chief Justice Mr.Sarath N.Silva Sunday declared open the Trincomalee modern court complex constructed at a cost of about 79 million rupees under the World Bank funded Legal and Judicial Reforms Project of the Ministry of Justice. Trincomalee Bar Association President Mr.O.L.M.Ismail presided the opening ceremony.


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SLA trooper commits suicide in Vavuniya

[TamilNet, Saturday, 11 September 2004, 10:45 GMT]
A Sri Lanka army soldier committed suicide by shooting himself in his bunker in Pampaimadu, 5 kilometres west of Vavuniya Saturday, Police in the northern border town said.
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Kachchaithivu stranded refugees rescued

[TamilNet, Friday, 10 September 2004, 16:40 GMT]
25 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees stranded in Kachchathivu, an islet in Indian Ocean, were rescued and transported to Nedunthivu, one of the islets in Jaffna peninsula by a co-operative passenger boat Friday evening, Jaffna district secretariat sources said.
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25% of NE Provincial Council vacancies not filled

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 08 September 2004, 10:43 GMT]
More than one-fourth, about 18,666 vacancies are not filled in the the North East Provincial Council (NEPC), which administers eight districts of the province, Jaffna Killinochchi, Mullaitivu, Mannar, Vavuniya, Trincomalee, Batticaloa and Ampara. Out of 60,034 officially approved positions in 2000 only 41,368 have been filled, sources said.


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Vavuniya Sinhala homeguards sentenced for aiding rape of minor

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 September 2004, 12:14 GMT]
Two homeguards from a Sinhala village six kilometres east of Vavuniya were each sentenced to three years of rigourous imprisonment Tuesday for aiding and abetting the rape of a thirteen year old girl. The homeguards, husband and wife, had abducted the child from her home in the village of Kachchakodi where the couple were employed as auxillaries to Sri Lankan security forces during the war in 1999.
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Catholic youths hold peace rally in Vavuniya

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 07 September 2004, 10:41 GMT]
"We are perturbed by the absence of any signs or efforts for strengthening peace. Instead we only see increasing violence in all parts of Sri Lanka. We have assembled here to pray for peace," said Rev.Rayappu Joseph, Bishop of Mannar, addressing the youth, at the conclusion of a youth conference in Vavuniya Saturday, sources said.
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Vavuniya said facing big stink

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 September 2004, 15:41 GMT]
Vavuniya is on the verge of a big stink as its Urban Council (UC) struggles to find a place to dispose the northern border town's garbage and waste. ''We have had to completely stop collecting garbage for the last three days. There are more than fifteen tons of garbage from the town to be disposed daily'', said a UC official Monday. The council stopped dumping garbage outside the town after villages in the area protested last month.
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Tigers to repay public debt

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 September 2004, 12:33 GMT]
The Finance Division of the Liberation Tigers announced Monday it would start repaying another part of the war loan it raised from the people of Jaffna, Mannar, Mullaithivu and Vavuniya next week from 17 September. Tigers' Finance Division has been paying back its huge public debt in Jaffna in stages since Colombo signed a truce with Kilinochchi in February 2002. LTTE Finance Division issued certified bonds to individuals from whom it borrowed money for the 'Fund to Liberate the Soil'.
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Refugee arrested by Vavuniya Police said missing

[TamilNet, Monday, 06 September 2004, 11:10 GMT]
A refugee man arrested by Sri Lanka Police in early August this year is missing, his wife told Mannar Citizens' Committe Monday. Police had told the missing refugee's wife that they had arrested him on suspicion in Vavuniya town on 4 August but had released him the same day.
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Training for unemployed graduates begins in Vavuniya

[TamilNet, Thursday, 02 September 2004, 13:16 GMT]
A three month training program for hundred and sixty eight unemployed graduates in the Vavuniya district was inaugurated Thursday. The program is part of a controversial scheme by President Chandrika Kumaratunga's government to provide state jobs for more forty one thousand unemployed graduates. The scheme was introduced after mass protests and hunger strikes backed by the Marxist Sinhala nationalist Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, President Kumaratunga's mail coalition ally. Critics say it will cause a huge strain on the cash strapped Sri Lankan treasury.
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Murder accomplice says paramilitary cadre forced him

[TamilNet, Wednesday, 01 September 2004, 17:37 GMT]
One of the suspects who were arrested on 24 August in connection with the murder of a girl in Sithamparapuram, 14 kilometres southeast of Vavuniya, told Vavuniya judge Mr. Manickavasagar Ilancheliyan Wednesday that the main suspect in the case, Mr. Mendis Thilakrajah, had forced him to help remove the body of the victim by threatening to harm his wife and children. “Thilakrajah threatened me saying that he was a member of the Varathar Ani and hence could hurt my family”, Mr. Malaiyandi Antonyraj, told the magistrate who recorded his confession.
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Troubled Vavuniya campus to reopen

[TamilNet, Thursday, 26 August 2004, 17:18 GMT]
The Vavuniya campus of the University of Jaffna will re-open from 1 September, officials said Thursday. The campus has been troubled by student unrest since June.
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Paramilitary cadre arrested for rape, murder of girl

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 24 August 2004, 12:16 GMT]
Vavuniya Police Tuesday found the skeletal remains of a girl who was allegedly raped and murdered by a member of a paramilitary working with the Sri Lanka army. The girl's skeleton was found, still bound and gagged, in the toilet of an abandoned house in Sithamparapuram on information by three men, including the paramilitary cadre, who were arrested on suspicion Monday. Two skeletons were found Monday in the village, 14 kilometres southeast of Vavuniya.
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Skeletons found near refugee camp in Vavuniya

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 August 2004, 10:29 GMT]
Sri Lanka Police Monday found the skeletal remains of two persons believed to have been murdered in Sithamparapuram, 14 kilometres southeast of Vavuniya. A woman's clothes, half burnt, were discovered near one of the skeletons, which lay 20 yards apart. Police said a refugee woman was reported missing from the Sithamparapuram welfare camp eight months ago.
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Colombo said considering alternative to Nordic truce mission

[TamilNet, Monday, 23 August 2004, 06:36 GMT]
Sri Lanka' Deputy Minister of Defence, Mr. Ratnasiri Wickremanayaka, said Monday that his government is thinking of either enhancing the powers of the Nordic truce monitoring mission in the island or finding a more effective alternative to it.
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Twenty two thousand families hit by drought in Vavuniya

[TamilNet, Sunday, 22 August 2004, 07:49 GMT]
Severe drought and scarcity of drinking water has affected 22,806 families in the Vavuniya district, relief officials said Sunday. Most water reservoirs have dried up. A few which retain water are drying up fast, according to them.
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