Budget proposals 2019
The budget proposals presented on March 5 are commendable as considerable measures have been taken to provide relief to the people, especially, the students and youngsters.
We would be pleased if the proposals come into effect without delay. But the private sector employees have been forgotten. There are thousands of employees earning Rs. 25,000 per month in the private sector without any future prospects.
Jazeema Jaldeen,
Raddolugama
Greater transparency needed from taxi drivers
I use call-taxis to commute in Colombo and outside the city. I noted that unlike before, now you don’t get installed meters to show the charges when we travel.
Instead, the driver uses a smart phone and tell us the charge only when we are dropped.
If we know the charges progressing as we travel, we will be alert to any abnormal jumps or we can get off at a certain point if it exceeds our budget.
I appeal to taxi Companies and the authorities to enforce the installation of meters for greater transparency in the mileage pricing and protect the customer from exploitation from unscrupulous drivers.
A concerned citizen
Free education needs reforms
The Government provides free education and free health services to the people. This is excellent, but can we be happy about the quality of these services?
The Government spends millions of rupees on free education. If free education is of good quality, why are students attending private tuition classes?
Do we know how many schoolchildren attend private tuition classes? Over 90 percent of schoolchildren in Colombo and the suburbs attend tuition classes.
This shows something is wrong with our free education system.
Consider university education. Can we be satisfied with the standards? Can we be satisfied with the quality? Are we producing professionals for the country? Why are so many graduates unemployed? How many of them can start a business of their own? How many of them have the practical knowledge to do a job? Is university education helping our industries?
An ounce of action or practice is better than a ton of theory.
Our school and university education system is good in theory, but in the practical aspect, the system needs improvement.
D. Weeratunga,
Nugegoda
Reflection on death
Human beings must remember everyone has to face death someday or the other somewhere somehow. But there may be a very few who remember this. All of us know that we will die some day and say that it is so. But we think that it will take a long time for us to die.
We always try to amass wealth or do something to satisfy ourselves. Because of this, if death suddenly comes to us, we are afraid to face it.
Another point is that if we always remember our death, we will not be able to do our day-today work because of our mentality that we would die soon, and it is useless to do anything. But we must be in the habit of working while remembering that death is inevitable and we should be ready to face death.
Martin Dasanayake,
Dompe