Environmental health hazards!
Food is a vital necessity for the survival of the human beings and in that water is indispensable for all living. The media highlights the plight of people walking many kilometers to fetch water.
They have a bath once a month only! People in the urban areas are gifted with pipe borne water.
We find that there are so many poultry farms, piggery, dairy and cattle farms (Buffaloes) and goat farms close to residential areas and these cause untold misery to people living in the area. The nuisance of the foul smell, the fly and mosquito menace are beyond anybody’s expression. Dengue is rampant in these areas! In the Kandy District especially in the rural and abandoned Tea Estate Sector, there are many poultry farms which use the water from streams closeby what the villagers below use for drinking and bathing purposes.
These cause the misery of health problems. No doubt big time branded farms are located in places where it is not a problem to the masses and are well maintained and every care taken to maintain cleanliness unlike the farms in the rural sector amongst human dwellings.
It is time, the health authorities take steps to locate these farms that are a health hazard to the people to marked locations so that the masses in these areas are protected against dengue, fly and mosquito menace and make the water pure for drinking and bathing purposes.
Also invariably, the lorries come late in the night to collect these birds and the peace and sleep disturbed of the people living in the area. The deep-litter is thrown in the vicinity developing a breeding ground for fly and mosquitoes. These must be stopped and the health authorities should take appropriate action to streamline these farms so that there are no health hazard problems.
Kingsley Durairaj
Pannipitiya.
Elders treated as ‘Oxen who had outlived their period of usefulness’
The treatment, the elders receive is so agonizing and demoralizing to cite that whatsoever guarantees and protection are enshrined in the elders’ Rights Act and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are nothing but mere paper tigers.
A few of the press exposures:
(1)No protection for Sri Lanka’s Elders – 05.06.2011 (ii) Daughter locked father in kennel, Father’s room given to gods – 14.10.2015 (iii) Elderly man abandoned on Elders’ Day in front of a temple Oct. 1st – 3.10.16
It is pathetic that the State too looks upon this category of people as ‘Oxen who had outlived their period of usefulness’.
I am a senior citizen of 83 years old served the public for over 30 years aggrieved to adduce that my fundamental rights have been infringed by the bureaucrats of the Health Ministry, Public Service Commission and the Human Rights Commission from 1984.
I appealed to the President and Cabinet Ministers to intervene and mete out justice who have called for relief and redress to afford to me by the bureaucrats who have turned dear ears to them and me.
It is a sorry plight that there is no provision in any of the human and fundamental rights protection that the violators of such rights and protections are not brought to book and inflict punishment on them for their violations and infringement.
It is left to the peoples’ representatives of the Parliament to judge the prevailing state of affairs under the bureaucrats who bring disrespect and disgrace the government.
The President on 9.4.2014 snubbed on the noses of the bureaucrats of Ministries and Departments who neglect the aggrieved appeals to peoples’ representatives as political interference forgetting the fact the bureaucrats are not the representatives of the people but politicians. When injustice is caused by any one whether the bureaucrats of Ministries or the so called Commissions, people have the right to complain and they have the power to take disciplinary action.
- M. Chandran