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May / June 2006
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Kandy's New Mayor and Councils

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Kandy has a new mayor, deputy mayor and a Council with one third freshmen councilors. The UNP retained power with a reduced poll. Its total poll declined by 25% from about 29,000 in 2002 to 22,000 in 2006. In contrast the PA increased its poll by almost 50% from around 10,000 to 15,000. However, even the canvassing by a freshly elected president failed to dislodge the UNP which has built over the years an almost unshakable base in this town.

The evidence suggests that part of the UNP's success in Kandy is its popularity among the minority Muslims (16% of the voters) and the Tamils (9%). None of the minority community candidates of the PA/SLFP won a seat whereas of the 14 UNP candidates that won, over one fifth three Muslims and two Tamils came from the minorities.

Kandy voters continue to spurn the few female candidates that come forward for municipal elections. None have been elected and no female candidate has polled enough votes to have a chance of entering the council if a vacancy occurs in mid term. The lack of credible female candidates in Kandy is a part of the broader national political culture that does not encourage women to enter politics.

The law requires that 40% of the candidates must be below the age of 35. But only three (12.5%) of the successful candidates were in this age category. This tends to raise some doubts about the usefulness of this law. It is possible that the three who were successful would have been in the fray with or without such a law.

The results also give us a small glimpse of the sociology of voter behaviour. One of the new members Mr. Ananda Siriwardena in an interview with this newspaper says that most of the voters who bothered to vote in his area were members of the lower income group. Mr. Siriwardena nursed Gatambe and Urawela that has a mixture of working class residents and middle class residents with a significant proportion of the latter working in the University of Peradeniya. He claims that many of the middle class voters failed to vote. His explanation that the low income voters were more motivated because they relay on municipal services more than the middle class sounds plausible. This disinterest on the part of the middle class may also explain the relatively poor showing of several candidates from both major parties with professional backgrounds.

We noticed that each political party had its own partisan swearing in ceremony for their own councilors. The local government law allows for this. But tradition has been to have a common swearing in ceremony for all the members. This newspaper reports elsewhere in this edition the interviews that the mayor, leader of the opposition and some of the freshman councilors gave us. All of them promise to work in unity for the welfare of the community and the betterment of the city. We hope that these words rather than the narrowly partisan swearing in ceremonies are a more authentic representation of things to come. If not we would see the usual political bickering for the next four years rather than some constructive work for Kandy and its people.

The new mayor Mr. Aluvihare has been the “mayor in waiting” for a long period of time. In 2002 he topped the poll but his party bosses denied him the office. This time also he topped the poll. His only credible rival former mayor Mr. Kesara Senanayaka was a poor sixth on the UNP list and forfeited any serious claim to retain the mayoralty. Mr. Senanayake says that some of the decisions that he took as mayor for the benefit of the city did not endear him to some of the voters. This newspaper having watched his four year tenure would say that there is some truth in what he says. But this is a dilemma that every politician must face in a democracy. The new mayor Aluvihare too is sure to be confronted with the same challenge. Mr. Aluviahare's popularity is not in question. Now Kandy will watch out for his efficiency. This newspaper wishes him and his Council all success.

Peradeniya to Award Degrees in Nursing and Allied Health Sciences

Five new degree programs in the fields of Nursing, Pharmacy, Physiotherapy, Radiography/Radiotherapy and Medical Laboratory Science will commence this year at the University of Peradeniya. This is considered a major step forward in medical and health education in Sri Lanka.

The new degree programs will be conducted under the Faculty of Medicine of Peradeniya. The Medical Dean Dr. C D A Goonasekera and the Consultant and Advisor for Allied Health Sciences Professor P A J Perera are the principal resource persons responsible for establishing the new programs. Dr. Perera until his recent retirement served as Senior Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Peradeniya.

In a memorandum that Drs. Goonasekera and Perera have prepared on the subject they note the awkward imbalance that currently exists in the country's training of health sector human resources. For example, in nursing Sri Lanka is annually producing less than 500 nurses whereas the annual output of doctors has reached 700. For a viable hospital system the ratio should not only be reversed but the number of nurses should be a multiple of the number of doctors.

The pressing need to upgrade the quality of training is self evident. In nursing for example, in advanced healthcare systems training has moved far beyond general nursing. In most advanced countries nursing requires a degree. In Sri Lanka, the Open University currently produces about fifteen to twenty nurses with a B.Sc. each year. But more importantly nursing is increasingly a highly specialized branch of health and medical science. For example, Dr Goonasekera and Dr Perera point out in a memorandum* that they have prepared that in western hospitals there are nurse specialists, who are “authorized to prescribe medicines, carry out anesthetic techniques, administer cytotoxic drugs, and implement changes in patient management without obligatory reference to doctors.” Graduate pharmacists also have limited authority to prescribe medicine. Highly trained radiotherapists are essential to make available in Sri Lanka advanced technologies in radiotherapy.

The University of Peradeniya is ideally qualified to start the new degree programs. It has a well established medical school with a strong infrastructure. Six of seven faculties at Peradeniya - Medicine, Dental, Engineering, Biological and Physical Sciences, Agriculture and Veterinary Science belong to the broad field of natural sciences. These have the capacity to provide the required infrastructure for the new degree programs. The two teaching hospitals at Peradeniya and Kandy, Nurses Training Schools at Kandy and Kurunegala, and the Medical Laboratory Training School at Peradeniya will also be helpful facilities for the new program.

The candidates for new degrees will start with a foundation course in the first year comprising of subjects such as English, Communication, Information Technology, Ethics, Mathematics and Statistics, Physics and Electronics, Anatomy, Biochemistry and Physiology. In the next three years they will receive advanced training including training in research and practical training in the chosen fields.

Peradeniya is negotiating a link program with the University of Sheffield Hallam of the United Kingdom for purposes of recognition and postgraduate training. Sheffield Hallam has a recognized Allied Health Sciences program of its own.

Peradeniya authorities have allocated the old Dental School building complex at Augusta Hill as the home for the new Allied Health Sciences Program. It is envisaged that as it evolves the program would eventually acquire the status of a separate faculty the way that Dental Sciences did a couple of decades ago.

The initiators of this project at Peradeniya are acutely aware that the nurses, pharmacists, radiographers and others who currently serve the country are indispensable for a well functioning healthcare system. Thus the new Allied Health Sciences Program will provide intensive short in-service training programs for these personnel to upgrade their knowledge. This, they hope would also help smoothly integrate the new graduates from the Peradeniya program to the existing service structure.

· GRADUATES IN ALLIED HEALTH SCIENCES: AN OVER DUE NATIONAL NEED