People’s Convention for Good Governance writes open letter to President

The People’s Convention for Good Governance has written an open letter to President Ranil Wickremesinghe to extend support to three national initiatives.

Following is the full text of the letter written by People’s Convention for Good Governance convenor Richard de Zoysa.

We presented the People’s Convention for Good Governance on 25 February, 2023 at the BMICH in the presence of a gathering of over 400 which included Civil Society leaders, Parliamentarians, Professionals, Senior School students and a cross section of Sri Lankans from all 22 districts.

Murtaza Jaferjee delivered a lecture on Economic Recovery, Prof. Arjuna Parakrama was the Moderator of an Education Reforms Forum for which Dr. Tara de Mel, Prof. Harendra de Silva and Nilu Anandappa participated, Shehara de Silva and Sharjah Muhseen shared their perspectives on Production and Services and Dr. Pakiasothy Saravanamuttu moderated a forum on Ethnicity (Unity and Inclusion) which included Jeremy Liyanage, Selvi Sachithanandam, Ishan Jalill and Arum Siddarth. Omar Khan spoke on what he termed as a visionary catalyst. Maithree Gunaratne recalled candidly the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the post-independence era.

The cornerstone of good governance is education. The Ministry of Education implements policy and is responsible for guiding young children right up to the point that they are on the threshold of manhood or womanhood.  However, it needs a few vital reforms that will be instrumental in ushering in successive generations of united and prosperous Sri Lankans.

The three national initiatives that are proposed to be implemented by The Ministry of Education, are as follows.

1. Teaching Ethics to children from Playgroup (above 2 years old) to Year 3 in all pre-schools and primary schools respectively. The President’s directive has to be obtained to enforce implementation in the Pre -schools.

2. Making a firm step to implementing English as the common medium of instruction within 3 years. The infrastructure needed to commence this initiative is already in place together with 900 English Teacher Trainers.

3.  Three counsellors to be appointed in each and every school to advise probable dropouts, who should be channelled to their chosen vocations and monitored right up to the point that they are gainfully employed.

The vast majority of Sri Lankans firmly believe that these three initiatives will bring about the perfect solution to cure most of our ills and pave the way for a united nation.

We look forward to an opportunity to discuss in detail the above proposals with you and provide the expertise necessary to implement these proposals that would be an example to the world.