The TNA, as well as the elected former council under Justice C.V. Wigneswaran, have been demanding the military-run pre-school teachers to be transferred to the NPC-run civil administration without reducing their salaries, ITAK parliamentarians S. Shritharan Ms Charles Nirmalanathan clarified to the protesting teachers.
The CSD was the brainchild of former SL Defence Secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa.
The occupying Sinhala military was running the pre-schools to maintain the military operated slave workforce of the so-called ‘Civil Security Divison’.
The SL military, locked in a counter-insurgency paradigm, went to the extent of issuing separate CSD uniforms to the children.
The CSD personnel were recruited from former LTTE fighters or employees who were released after prolonged detention by the SL military as part of creating a slave workforce to operate the farms the occupying Sinhala Army was running in Vanni.
A pre-school teacher under the CSD is provided with 32,000 LKR per month on the pay list of the SL military.
The salary of a pre-school teacher coming under the NPC administration stands at 6,000 rupees per month.
The elected NPC under Justice C.V. Wigneswaran and the TNA parliamentarians from Vanni were demanding the SL State to standardise 32,000 rupees as the salary for all pre-school teachers under the provincial system, and they wanted the SL President to transfer the administration of the military-run preschools to the civil authority.
Recently, the SL military-run administration invited the pre-school teachers to its office and informed them that they would be losing their jobs since January 01 as the TNA had demanded the SL President to scrap the pre-school system. The intention was aimed at inciting protests, TNA parliamentarians said.
The outgoing SL Governor Reginald Cooray is also using the preschool teachers to campaign in favour of extending his term, the sources further said.
The TNA parliamentarians also pointed out that the SL President had in fact agreed to their demands at the last ‘task force’ meeting held on 17 December 2018.
An official statement from the SL Presidential Secretariat, issued in Tamil, was also echoing the same observations. It is reproduced below.
A media release issued by SL President's media unit in Tamil on 17 December observes that Maithiripala Sirisena as agreeing to release lands of private people where the SL military was running its farms. It also observes, amongst others, the negative effects of the military-run pre-schools as discussed in the meeting.
