Friday 21st March, 2025

There has been a sharp increase in fatal accidents on Sri Lanka’s expressways during the past several years. On Tuesday night, a university lecturer lost his life and his family members sustained serious injuries in a mishap on the Kurunegala-Mirigama stretch of the Central Expressway. Road accidents cause about 2,500 deaths a year in Sri Lanka. Most of these accidents are preventable, according to road safety experts.

Public focus is typically on bereavement caused by road fatalities, but these incidents lead to serious social and economic issues as well. A World Bank (WB) report, Delivering Road Safety in Sri Lanka; Leadership Priorities and Initiatives to 2030, reveals that ‘the high road crash fatality and injury rates on Sri Lanka’s roads undermine the economic growth and progress made over the past decade on reducing poverty and boosting prosperity’. The report says the annual crash deaths per capita in Sri Lanka are twice the average rate in high-income countries and five times that of the best performing countries in the world! Sri Lanka reportedly has the worst road fatality rate among its immediate neighbours in the South Asia region. Numerous programmes have been implemented under successive governments to ensure road safety, but they have not yielded the desired results, and the Grim Reaper has been in overdrive.

Road safety experts have identified the following factors, inter alia, as the common causes of crashes on expressways and other roads, the world over: speeding, distracted driving, reckless driving, fatigue, driving under the influence of alcohol or narcotics, inclement weather conditions, inadequate road conditions, tailgating, improper lane changes, inexperience of drivers, overtaking dangerously, poor visibility, unroadworthy vehicles, poor signage or lack of road markings and impatience or time pressure. One of the aforesaid factors or a combination of two or more of them could lead to fatal accidents on any road. So, any strategy to prevent road mishaps consists in addressing those causes.

Crashes on expressways are usually rear-end collisions, as is obvious, and they involve heavy vehicles, in most cases. This is something the police should pay special attention to. On expressways, one can see many vehicles with taillights that are too dim to be noticed from a distance at night. Bulk haulers do not display properly-lit overlength signs. They pose a grave danger to other vehicles that ply at 100 kmph behind them at night. Such vehicles must not be allowed to use expressways or any other roads.

The police personnel stationed at interchanges are required to conduct visual inspections of vehicles, especially ill-maintained ones, that enter expressways to determine their roadworthiness, but they do not seem to carry out their duties and functions diligently. The only thing they do properly is to ticket errant drivers who exceed speed limits. Most drivers are aware of the expressway stretches that are not monitored by speed cameras, and they often tend to break speed limits in such areas, endangering their own lives as well as others’.

Countries such as South Korea, China, Australia, and Italy reportedly use drones equipped with speed detection technologies to monitor traffic, and this method is reported to have yielded impressive results. Sri Lanka should acquire the modern technologies to curb speeding, and the costs thereof can be passed on to errant drivers in the form of increases in fines for their efforts to break the sound barrier, as it were.

As for sleep-related road accidents, which have become a significant concern, there is a need for more rest areas along the expressways. Gadgets and technologies are available to monitor drivers’ eye movements and facial expressions and detect signs of drowsiness and fatigue. There are also steering wheel sensors to detect drowsiness of drivers. Modern vehicles come fitted with them, and some drowsiness detection systems can be retrofitted to older vehicles to help save lives. Making such technologies available at affordable prices should be part of any road safety programme.

The National Council for Road Safety, the police, etc., have been working tirelessly to make roads safe, but their efforts need a big fillip from the political authority. The above-mentioned WB report has said Sri Lanka will require an additional investment of almost US$ 2 billion to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 3.6 target of a 50% reduction in national road crash fatalities. This is a difficult target for a country emerging from an economic crisis, but it has to be achieved. The government should consider launching a national initiative similar to the Clean Sri Lanka programme to reduce road accidents.

Thursday 20th March, 2025

The police have found their ‘head’ at long last, but they’ve lost face. Their much-publicised manhunt for IGP Deshabandu Tennakoon came a cropper. Having been in hiding for 20 days, he surrendered to the Matara Magistrate’s court yesterday and was remanded.

The government sought to save face by claiming, in Parliament, yesterday that Tennakoon had surrendered while a CID team was in Matara to obtain a court order to freeze his assets. It also said the CID had conducted a thorough search of his house the previous day and taken into custody a large number of bottles of liquor, a small firearm, and two mobile phones. It would have the public believe that such actions scared Tennakoon into giving himself up. However, there is reason to believe that Tennakoon surrendered because his last-ditch attempt to have the arrest warrant for him stayed by the Court of Appeal failed.

It is now up to the CID to ascertain from Tennakoon where he was hiding and who helped him evade arrest for almost three weeks. The act of aiding and abetting the evasion of arrest is a punishable offence, as is public knowledge. The police are known to arrest the family members of the suspects they fail to arrest. One may recall that they took into custody the mother and another family member of Ishara Sewwandi, an accomplice of the killer of Gannemulle Sanjeewa. Acting on a tip-off, they arrested the shooter within a few hours of the incident, but Sewwandi has been on the run since 19 Feb., and the search for her has drawn a blank.

Tennakoon’s illegal behaviour has been a black mark on the police, who have also blotted their copybook by failing to arrest him. How can they be expected to catch the masterminds behind serious crimes, such as terror attacks?

In 2024, the then President Ranil Wickremesinghe appointed Tennakoon IGP amidst protests. His action made the SLPP-UNP government even more unpopular, and it is believed that the previous administration launched Operation Yukthiya against the underworld in a bid to shore up its crumbling image and justify Tennakoon’s appointment as IGP. There were many complaints of police excesses and fundamental rights violations during that operation. However, there was a pressing need for an all-out effort to neutralise the criminal gangs engaged in drug trafficking, contract killing, armed robberies, etc., but Yukthiya became a kind of political circus. There has been a steep rise in underworld activities since last year’s regime change. Hardly a day passes without a fatal shooting somewhere, but the police are doing precious little to stem the crime wave.

Tennakoon should not have been appointed IGP, but the previous regime needed someone who was willing to do its bidding unquestioningly. There were serious allegations against him including wrongful arrests, obstructing police investigations, failure to prevent the Easter Sunday terror attacks, threatening journalists, and attacking protesters. Above all, in December 2023, the Supreme Court, in a historic judgement, held Tennakoon responsible for torture. Not even that apex court judgement deterred the SLPP-UNP government from making Tennakoon the police chief.

There are lessons that the current police top brass should learn from their predecessors’ mistakes, especially those of Tennakoon. Unless they refrain from compromising their professional integrity to commit excesses and/or do politicians’ dirty work, they, too, will face the same fate as Tennakoon.

Wednesday 19th March, 2025

Some health sector trade unions launched a 24-hour strike yesterday, aggravating the suffering of the sick who visited the state-run hospitals seeking treatment. The protesting workers have said they were left with no alternative but to resort to trade union action as the Health Ministry had not heeded their grievances, the main being that their take-home salaries will decrease despite the government’s claim that it has granted them pay hikes.

A strike in one sector tends to have a domino effect on others, and trade union disputes have the potential to snowball. It will therefore be prudent for the government to address the root causes of the health sector labour struggles expeditiously. Health Minister Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa has, in his wisdom, opted for a game of chicken, hoping that the trade unions on the warpath will back down. Ironically, some pro-government trade unions which were accused of resorting to unfair industrial action, while the JVP was in the opposition, are berating the health sector strikers!

The government has asked the protesting health workers not to hold patients to ransom. Its call will resonate with the ordinary people dependent on free healthcare, but it will have to do much more if the problem at hand is to be solved once and for all. Ideally, vital sectors such as health should be free from strikes, but the governments do not take action to redress workers’ grievances unless trade unions resort to industrial action.

Most of the protesting trade unions backed the NPP in the last two elections, believing in the latter’s promises. Many Sri Lankans, including state employees, ‘barter’ their votes for the benefits promised by political parties in the run-up to an election. Problems occur when governments fail to fulfil their pledges after being ensconced in power.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, before presenting the NPP government’s maiden budget in Parliament, promised ‘unprecedented pay hikes’ for all public employees. When he, in his capacity as the Minister of Finance, announced salary increases through Budget 2025, it was made out to be a generous gesture, but the health sector trade unions are of the view that it was just a sleight of hand. The government succeeded in having a doctors’ strike put on hold by promising to effect changes to the budget during the committee stage to sort out issues pertaining to their salaries. The doctors will resume their trade union action unless the government fulfils its pledge. The government will be in trouble even if it manages to resolve the doctors’ pay issues, for other trade unions will demand that their grievances be redressed in a similar manner.

The NPP government is in the current predicament mostly due to over-promising and under-delivering. Interestingly, the JVP, whose trade unions would resort to industrial action at the drop of a hat during previous governments, is now inveighing against strikers. One may recall that the JVP opposed a worker’s struggle in 1980, when it pulled out of a general strike at the eleventh hour. The other leftist parties that organised the labour struggle claimed the JVP had acted at the behest of the UNP, which it was honeymooning with at that time. The J. R. Jayewardene government crushed the strike in the most brutal manner; UNP goons were unleashed on strikers, one of whose leaders was killed. About 45,000 strikers were sacked, and some of them committed suicide. The pro-UNP labour unions vehemently condemned the strikers. Four and a half decades on, the JVP trade unions are doing likewise!

The NPP has raised workers’ expectations to a level where it cannot manage them. It promised biannual pay hikes, coupled with a substantial increase in the cost of living allowance. Thus, it garnered favour with the state workers, who voted overwhelmingly for it in last year’s elections. Now, it is under pressure to make good on its promises. This reminds us of a conversation in Achebe’s No Longer at Ease; the protagonist, a young civil servant, is told by another that the problem is not taking bribes but failing to do what they are taken for. The NPP government has failed to do what the state workers who voted for it expected in return—substantial pecuniary benefits.

Meanwhile, let the warring trade unions be urged to ensure that their members earn their keep, and comply with the rules and regulations governing their institutions. About 213 biometric attendance machines installed in state-run health institutions at a cost of Rs. 31 million remain unused due to trade union resistance. Those who refuse to use these machines do not deserve to be paid with state funds.