Convener of the Inter University Students’ Federation (IUSF), Lahiru Weerasekera on Thursday warned the government that they will continue their fight to safeguard the country’s free education, and if the government want they can even resort to ‘killing them.’
Speaking to the media soon after hundreds of students were fired with tear gas in Fort, Weerasekera claimed that the tear gas was not fired with the intention of dispersing them, but was fired with the intention to harm the students who were protesting against a private medical university in Malabe.
“We are done talking, we will continue our fight. We will break these barriers and march forward, if they want they can kill us, but we will stop this fight only after we safeguard free education in this country,” he added.
BBS Rep / April 29, 2016
Free education is rampant with corruption. And the poorest calibre people keep taking the plum job. Look at the present incumbent Minister who has no clue what HIV AIDS is.
Lahiru Weerasekara must agitate to keep Education in Sri Lanka free from political influence at the same time. Otherwise free education will keep going downhill only to be replaced with private education institutions. The public will demand it. See how well entrenched private tuition is in our society.
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Raizuh Langai / April 29, 2016
Why all this fuss about a medical College? IF we close down this College, the rich certainly will go overseas and become doctors. This had been happening for a long time. These rich will never work in SL unless they can make more money here. At least this way we can save some foreign exchange..By striking our poor students will lose their valuable study time.
Same goes with Ragging. A relation of mine scored the best results in the district in A/L In the same year another rich guy just managed 3 S. By the time my relation crawled out of Lankan Uni and became just an accountant just because she studied some accountancy course apart from her uni studies, the rich guy finished MBA in a foreign country earned well in part time work to cover not only his study fees but to cover his airfares during the six years.
He is a now a consultant in a big international firm.
So please don’t ruin your valuable study time & future – PLEASE
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daham / April 29, 2016
Then just kill them. Why waste time? Let’s all go back to the ways of the last regime.
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Diluk Dias Desinghe / April 29, 2016
Perhaps some strategic killing is in order…..Premadasa style. The only way to educate these monkeys that what they are getting is a privilege not a right.
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Devasiri / April 29, 2016
IUSF should fight to clean Universities from fake professor appointments:The bitter truth in University recruitment for academic positions and promotions:First they find a person and then advertise according to his/her requirement and send aboard for their friends’ places for PhDs.More than 40% University Lecturers are relatives to each others and they give PG degrees to each other (Husband gives PhD to wife and girlfriend/mistress getting PG degree, sons, daughter and son-in law and daughter- in-law). Some Dept are family trees and even after retirement still they are in Universities and leave approval mainly based on sex other other outdoor ways in Sri Lankan Universities. Check minister inside please. As a tax payer to run this business, I like to propose following measures to clean Universities and get back to old golden days. 1) Identify and transfer all family members work in same University/Dept/Faculty as Lecturers. Recheck how these all family members came to system and penalize the responsible. Sometime wife is writing articles putting husband’s name for articles and husband getting professorship without shame (what ethics) presenting these to promotions. 2) Recheck all Lecturers and Professors qualifications and publications based on that re-grade them. 3) Never sent job applications received for academic positions to the respective academic depts. If you sent these applications they remove qualified PhD people and only interview henchmen. 4) Remove good business subjects from Arts faculty and hand over to Science and Technology faculties. See how Arts faculty destroyed good names of many good disciplines. Today Arts faculty products (graduates) are a symbol of unemployment. 5) Famous family dept must be closed and appoint President Commission to check inside and FCID must be called to checked inside for last 20 year period. 6) Never give professorships for jokers. 7) Reduce retirement age for academics 65 years to 60 or 58. 8) Follow strict rule while appointing Professors: In order to be a real international professor your PhD from world top 100 University, minimum 20 articles in ISI/SCOPUS indexed journals, 10 text books with international publishers and three countries have to appoint you as a Visiting professor. 9) Never allow any dept to issue first degree if you do not have sufficient number of PhDs in that dept. Take some Universities many Deans do not have PhDs. This is a recipe for disaster. 10) UGC can directly take task of recruitments of lecturers and give to respective Universities. This must be done quickly. 11) Select the best Lecturers with help of private sector independent body and sent to world top 100 universities with strict bond requirements. 12) Many of these so called academic jokers are now entering into professional bodies or they themselves create own fake professional bodies and they destroyed that profession also. 13) Develop comprehensive web sites for each University and say to show Publications with indexing place to public by each academics (not joke conference papers) and degrees where (Country and the University and international ranking of that University) they got their PHD. Today the most important thing is your PhD must come from accredited, ranking (at least 100) best University of the world to recognized your University basic products. Now see Sri Lankan local Universities are rotten to death. Somebody has to clean it.
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Patriot / April 29, 2016
Isn’t this the guy who asked MR for a Lamborghini at pre presidential election press briefing. There is a name for these guys in Sinhala called “Modaya”.
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Gune / April 29, 2016
Completely misguided youth. They are not part of this progressive world. They are doing more harm to Sri Lanka than what they think.
We are paying taxes for them to study free and all we see is them protesting on the roads wasting the countries resources.
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Paddy / April 29, 2016
Who’s paying you to organize these strikes Lahiru? You had free education because I, the tax payer, was paying for it. Just because you got it free, doesn’t mean that nobody paid for it. Appreciate that and go do your studies. Let the kids whose parents are able to finance their studies do so. By the way, these very same parents financed you as well…. directly or indirectly.
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Kugan / April 29, 2016
Pls explain who is stoping free education here.even if it’s private medical college there they have to follow certain protocol it’s not free bus.
In accountancy if you don’t have full requirements to follow there are exemptions ie if you don’t have A/L then you do AAT likewise in engineering that’s why there is apprentice but after all there will be exam to test the confidatialty. So what the fuss
Even the qualification and the job is not relevant in our mother lanka I seen a advert to fill a pizza maker they are asking minimum 3 passes in A/Level is there any connection for the job.god sake if it’s me I will ask for good enthusiast person than hopeful (failed)professional.
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Point of View / April 29, 2016
Products of free education ! What a waste of money !!
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Prasanna Suriyarachchi / April 29, 2016
Or dear how selfish you are? Do you think those students who are studding at Malabe MC and their parents do not like free education but wants to lavishly spend their hard earned money.Not really, but they do not have opportunity or space right now for free education. Do you want them to look up and stay at home until free education full fill entire demand of the country? You must embrace the entrepreneurs who are taking such a risk to fill the vacume and venture in to a project like this with so many hardship and many attacks from people like you(fishing in the trouble water). Do not capitalise the life of innocent children to convince the government to uplift free education system. On the other hand, when free education system is at full swings you need not to have picketing to close the private educational institution, but they will have their natural death. There may be hundreds of things to rectify at Malabe MC. please extend your cooperation to improve their standards, rather than envying for those student, parents and the brave Investors
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Dag / April 29, 2016
Free education is the only asset that poor people have in this country, no other asset they can have under the present system. Some people who had the benefit of free education has forgotten the history and trying to safe guard so called private education. Even in some developed countries they have arranged solid loan schemes etc. and maintain the government controlled university education. Unfortunately the systems like NVQ is not well established in S L for the A L leavers to engaged in vocational training. However Lahiru and the present student struggle must be welcome by all who had free education and enjoy higher positions not only in S L but also worldwide.
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Rob / April 29, 2016
These students are supposed to be the future generation of intellectuals in our country. These idiots cannot understand the fact that when families who can afford or people who take loans to send their children abroad for education the country looses foreign exchange. having private universities are good for the country. These are the same guys who protest against private universities now & after few years doesn’t want to use public transportation & strikes for vehicle permits. while our housemaids toil to bring foreign exchange to the country, the doctors & JVP are for sending students abroad. where do these guys have their brains??
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Ahmed Khan / April 30, 2016
As a medical student of SAITM, I am very worried by what the IUSF is doing, and highly disturbed by their attitudes and reasoning. It’s true that private higher education institutions even if regulated well would threaten free education by absorbing some of intellectual assets of the state unis (and that’s the only credible reason I can think of against private higher education), yet there are various ways in which this can be prevented. SAITM is not a degree shop; the exams are as tough as those in the state medical faculties and the fail rate is very high. I wish there were common exams across all medical faculties in the country – state and private – and a ranking sytem established.
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Goraka / April 30, 2016
There is NOTHING call free education – tax payers are paying for it. If these dumbass students don’t get it, Sri Lanka is in big trouble. At a slightest pretext, they go on strike, including the dumbass Doctors.
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das / May 2, 2016
Ventriloquism of the JVP…
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