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Newly-appointed Northern Province Governor Jeevan Thiagarajah aspires to have a province where triggers to future conflicts are eased and one which is sustainable in food and peaceful at the end of his tenure. “We will be ruthlessly working to be the best province of the country,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Daily FT.
Commenting about development and the challenges in the province, Thiagarajah said President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was trying hard to get people to deliver the job. “We have a large Government structure and if he gives orders and they should go down the line properly and then it works well,” he said, adding that President Rajapaksa required support from genuine people to take the country forward.
Having roots in Jaffna and also to former Malaya, he is no new to administration. Thaigarajah held executive positions in several humanitarian and human rights organisations and was a member of the Election Commission of Sri Lanka. “My father is a medical administrator and I am a stickler for rules and regulations and procedures, particularly relating to public property,” he said.
Following are the excerpts:
By Shanika Sriyananda
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Northern Province Governor Jeevan Thiagarajah
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Q: How challenging is your new role as the Governor of the Northern Province?
There are plenty of areas to work and there are so many issues coming up simultaneously but some of those issues need urgent solutions. We have about 34,000 staff and out of that, I will leave half of them in the education sector. The Northern Province has ample manpower but getting the best out of this resource is one of the main challenges.
Q: According to your homework, what are the priority areas of issues in the province that need short-term and long-term solutions?
I will implement 53 new proposals to develop and secure the province. It is spelled out from creating water catchment reservoirs to de-silting every water catchment facility to education to fisheries to business to agriculture to community policing to law and order protection of fauna and flora.
Climate change, which brings about completely unpredictable weather patterns, has already started affecting countries. The prediction is that the worst of it can come down right up to the southern edge of Vavuniya. Extreme heat can destroy crops. This is a serious issue in the province and our challenge is to be food sufficient in about two years.
You can have what you want but without water, you cannot live there. Historically, we have had issues with water, salinisation, etc. We need to find solutions to be sustainable in water after two years. I would very much like to see that not a drop of water is allowed to be wasted or just goes into the sea. I believe the conservation of water is fundamental to sustaining life.
Another issue is that the majority of the population in the north is from low-income level families. Everybody talks about poor housing in the province. But, if you talk about the rest of the country, how many people actually own houses? It is a luxury to own a house. That reality has to be spoken about. In the north, people need decent shelter. I will try to talk about decent shelter.
Then it is education. The education at independence and education at 2021 are very different. It is no longer that you have passed your O/L, A/L and have gone to the university, although this education is important, it is not the only part of the education as there is catch up education, adult education and vocational education.
There is also education that recognises pre-existing skills. Ensuring all of these come up in the line is another area of focus in development. All of these only can happen if the public service is competent. Therefore, continuous upgrading of skills or smart management of public service is essential, so we can have optimal use of resources.
There are also other emotive issues which keep on propping up. If it is emotive it can trigger various other consequences and they have to be dealt with properly.
Q: Inclusive development is one major expectation under President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s ‘Saubhagya Dekma’. What is your understanding of development in the province and is there any specific development target that you expect to fulfil during your tenure?
Leaders can give instructions and they cannot also be Grama Niladharis to do follow-ups. Leaders expect to have people who can deliver. President Rajapaksa tries hard to get people to deliver the job. We have a large Government structure and if he gives the order and it goes down the line properly it works well. It is simply that the administrators have to be supportive of the political leadership to do the right thing. President Rajapaksa requires support from genuine people to take the country forward.
We are looking at the unemployed to utilise their skills to fuller and also create opportunities for those who are at home to have home-based enterprises. We are also looking at attracting investments to help development as nobody should be hungry and nobody should be blocked from advancing their livelihoods.
The first thing people talk about is employment opportunities and secondly business. Very often people ask me, ‘Have you gone to Jaffna?’ What I say to them is that I am not the Governor for Jaffna but the Governor for one province and five districts. There is always stereotyped thinking. Can you justify people in the southern part of Mannar or Mullaitivu traveling all the way to Jaffna to get the business done? No. We want to bring business where the people live, so they can get things done easily. It should be a people-centric approach.
Then the question of access to finance arises. For development, it requires finance. Are there channels that make it faster for people to bring those resources? Normally the Government is not very strong in development in theory as the private sector. But we have to bring a better understanding amongst all provincial staff what development is. We have a large resource pool for that and development is also not seen as in isolation for provincial matters as it is national development progress.
Q: It seems politically-driven elements are still misleading people in the north and reluctant to see any development in the north. How do you plan to overcome this challenge?
I am focused on getting the maximum out of the administration. It doesn’t matter what their political leanings are. If you are an administrator you need to start working in one direction. Politicians have to have a voter base and they also have to retain that. They also have to canvas for the voter base and they have to create appealing slogans, etc. to survive. I have every intention of reaching out to them as I know most of them and I am not ultra-old but I am not young either. I can talk to people in a particular way.
One single message from the Governor of the North is that I wish to make all of the stakeholders get to one forum. I want all of them to tell me ‘this is good’ or ‘it is not a good idea’. I have every intention to reach out to them and bring them into the loop. Then nobody will think that they have been excluded in the process. As full-time politicians, they have not been marginalised by the Governor who is not a politician. This is what I want them to feel to get their contribution to the development process.
Q: Unemployment is another key issue that needs solutions. What are your plans to bring more investments to the north?
Due to the COVID situation we found that a startling number of people have gone out from the north for jobs. It is shocking to know that Vavuniya has produced the highest number of migrant workers. There is a significant internal migrant population who goes out of the province for employment. There are daily income earners and we need to create jobs, but then who is going to create jobs and who has skills to match the market? Just dumping people in jobs is not productive and it is not an easy challenge but unemployment is as bad as homelessness.
On the other hand, we need to find productive labour and this is something that we have to work on. Interacting with people is important particularly with the unemployed sector to know about their pre-existing skills to fit them in the job market. They may not have money in the bank but they may have the knowledge. We need to know about that to have a holistic approach to unemployment. One has to deal in finding sustainable employment and decent standards of living for them to solve the issue of unemployment.
Q: Fishermen in the north staged a protest against illegal poaching by the Indian fishermen in Sri Lankan waters. Do you think that you can intervene in this longstanding issue?
I think we all, including the Fisheries Minister and other representatives in the Northern Province, have to speak up for the interest of the fishermen in the province as we have a key role to play to solve this issue. The criticism from the fishermen is that we are not playing a role to solve the issue and we have to understand their sentiments as well.
This is not a new issue and the Government has been engaging with it for a long time with the consideration of international relations, the use of the sea and maritime boundaries. The options have been suggested and they are already on the table. There are three or four sustainable models and need to select what can be done in respect of this issue.
From the Sri Lankan side, I assume that ministers – Finance, Foreign, and Fisheries – are working together and engaging with their counterparts in the Indian Government and Tamil Nadu, the respective navies, and the Coast Guards of the two countries. We have to find urgent solutions because it is bubbling all the time and are trading accusations against each other. It is not a very good environment and we need to defuse the situation.
Q: What are your plans to promote tourism in the north as it has the best beaches and archaeological and religious sites?
Firstly, there should be decent places for transit, places to stay, trained local guides, directions, easy access to information, markets for tourists and places to go for an emergency for local and foreign tourists. We have to bring all these to promote tourism in the province. Last week I issued a set of instructions in this regard as i am on roads traveling to the north and I can see the situation for myself.
Another important aspect is that people need to be able to understand either of the two official languages. We need to promote tourism without exploiting the local population and environment.
Tourism also can be promoted to make Sri Lanka a second home, which means a permanent residency part of the year and you are coming not as a citizen of another country. I like to promote Sri Lanka as a second home concept, which will automatically promote sites, people, food and the environment of the province.
Q: A small segment of the Tamil diaspora is still propagating the LTTE ideology. Will there be plans to tap their support in the northern development process?
Most people use the word diaspora but I use the word ‘people of Sri Lankan origin’. For example, the owner of Air Asia has roots in Sri Lanka and there have been ministers of the Singaporean Government who have connections to Sri Lanka. This particular diaspora connotation is about those who left either unhappily or willingly because they have decided to move to other countries.
Let’s talk about those who left in a hurry unhappily due to conflict in 1983, etc. Minimally they were 30 years old when they left Sri Lanka. The older ones are those who migrated and worked and the younger ones were born and educated there. Some have succeeded very well in life and there are brilliant professionals among them.
The question is, which of these strata are we going to attract for investments? Why would anybody want to come from London to Jaffna or Paris to Jaffna or Berlin to Jaffna to invest? The diaspora's motive got less and less to invest in Sri Lanka and I think it is a downhill slope but we need to explore what the best they can give us. Yes, without a doubt we have to engage with the diaspora.
The old diaspora arguments and the current diaspora arguments don’t resonate and because the diaspora of today is very different. I am not dismissing that some of the diaspora have been taken very differently. I am not saying that there are no efforts even amongst the small groups that hopefully there will be a revival. This is also a part of the challenges to be able to deal with the right ones and engage with them.
Q: According to your connections to the diaspora and experience do you think that there is room for the LTTE to revamp in the north?
The LTTE had two sides to a mirror – external and internal. The internal mirror, which was the Sri Lankan mirror, was shattered on May 19, 2009. Was the external mirror shattered is not sure. If the external mirror was not shattered completely, there would be elements outside and they would be used by the interested parties as proxies. These are the things that one has to be conscious about and that is the reality.
Q: Don’t you think that if the people in the province are financially sound and socially accepted then they will not be easily attracted to terror activities?
Yes, then they will not be easy targets. One of my ambitions is when I leave I want to create a situation where there is no reason for anyone to go back to conflict. Therefore we need to deal with triggers to make a peaceful, law-abiding province, where everybody feels that they are served. If we can do this then there is very little room for violent outbursts.
Q: What are your comments about the Government’s efforts to reconcile the ethnic communities and what more to do?
Sri Lankan history is such that there is unbelievable material on the table already developed to address the issues on reconciliation. There was a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC) document which is a solid piece of work.
I strongly believe that reconciliation is about approaches to human behaviour. I would like to invite people to share their views on development. I want them to genuinely be stakeholders of the process. Reconciliation and reconciling is very much on the same page. Reconciling differences is a challenge and I will work to reconcile differences.
Q: Are there any special plans to help the ex-LTTEers and widows in the north who suffer economically and socially?
They would also fall under the category of marginalised or unemployed and people in poverty. They will automatically fall into that category, without naming them as a special category. I would leave no room for anybody to leave out.
Q: The water project to divert water from Iranamadu Tank to Jaffna is still in the pipeline and will there be new projects to find solutions for water scarcity in the province?
I mentioned at the beginning that we want to find solutions for the water issue within the next two years. We do not want to waste water and we will conserve water, recharge groundwater and ensure we store water for human consumption as well as agricultural purposes. Water is a key area and we are also worried about desalination and how we deal with it. Rainwater harvesting is also another consideration.
Q: What kind of a region that you expect to see at the end of your term?
A province where triggers to future conflicts are eased, one that is sustainable in food and peaceful. This will be the ambition of all administrators and this will be the province that other provinces look at in terms of employment, development and protected environment. We want to be the best in the business and we are ruthlessly working to be the best province of the country.
