Who said Sri Lanka and UK are in a quandary?

 Small wonder, Sri Lanka wants every public servant to work only four (4) long days a week.

by Victor Cherubim 

“Food and fuel prices have reached 40 year highs, struggling to put food on the table, parents miss meals to save money and children arrive at school with empty stomachs. Farmers are trying to cope with rising fertiliser and delivery costs and the degraded countryside is now a significant emitter of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. The answer to all this, believe it or not, is more home grown tomatoes………..is what the Minister said.”

I read this piece in the latest edition of the New Statesman by Philippa Nuttall. I immediately wondered whether she was writing about Sri Lanka, but failed to realise she was referring to good old England today!

I thought to myself she must be “nuts”? Who said, the “World is One,” it’s a small world isn’t it?  After all who is controlling our planet? What happens in one corner of our planet has an immediate effect in another. The grass is always greener on the other side.

Small wonder, Sri Lanka wants every public servant to work only four (4) long days a week.

With all the Poya days and a variety of other days as holidays, we in Sri Lanka have the best of both worlds. No worries, we have the most holidays according to the Guinness Book of World Records, but are we equally productive?No wonder our “veddamahathyaya’s, proudly proclaim our longevity.

At long last, we have come to see the validity of Shift work. Working from 07.00 hours to 14.00 hours and from 14.00 hours to 21.00 hours, is such a novel idea in Sri Lanka today. Our Immigration Officers can thus issue 31,000 Sri Lankan Passports per day, to all crying out to migrate abroad. What choice have we got, we might say?

From what I have seen on our TV screens in Sri Lanka, the more we complain, shout out,march on and off our streets, and populate our different “Gotha Go home, and other Gammas,” about our rights and wrongs, about one thing or another, the more our lungs exercise, the more the world think “we have gone wild”. But really, it makes us let off steam and keeps us so proud, pleased, happy and energised.

While today those of us Sri Lankans, living, working, studying, unemployed and even those retired abroad, hardly can contemplate to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. To tell the truth, life is not a bed of roses abroad. Of course, we seem to have to give our “blood, sweat and tears,” for starters, to claim Social Service benefits or Universal Credit, as it is now called, unless we are endowed with three or more children.

I know a Sri Lankan who came to UK and now works 8 hours a day, six days a week with overtime at a Cold Storage complex in a supermarket, to survive and send money home to his wife and kids,  He says he now cannot afford three full meals a day. In a sense, when we hear the moans and groans of our fellowLankans in our homeland, we feel the world is one.

Of course, we hear the gripes of Sri Lankans in our homeland having to shut off the fans, the AC, in the sweltering heat as they cannot afford the costs. We see the three wheelers being pushed by hand by their drivers to petrol stations. We are told that Mattala Airport is draining our hard earned reserves, to keep it open, to cater for IATA rules.

Do we have too many “sell by date oldie’s” as Ministers of our Government? It is high time that we bring in new youth, new blood to make the necessary changes that are long overdue. 

The World is one, but we in Sri Lanka have to realise that our insight into problems we now encounter, have to be addressed in different and innovative ways. Some of the best lessons have come from making mistakes, as a result of uncomfortable situations. Our youth are well motivated to see things more clearly and realistically, aiding decision making and boosting confidence. 

Are we too afraid to us to allow the youth of today to take a grip on our problems and to make the difficult choices we urgently need, without procrastination?