Sudath Gunasekara 18.6.2017.

The Government is said to have taken a decision to hand over Dengu eradication, clearing the garbage mess, handling flood relief and all strikes to the Armed Forces.  A News item

Although the Army, Navy and the Air Force operate in three different spheres that is Land, Sea and Air, we all know what their fundamental functions are. We also know that although their services could be called in an emergency situation, things like eradication of Dengu or any other epidemic, clearing urban garbage messes, attending to flood relief and settling strikes etc are certainly not their routine functions.

There is a Ministry and a Department of health and a whole band of trained medical and paramedical professional to attend to eradication of Dengu or any other epidemic and nearly 15 Ministers of Health in Colombo and the Provinces. In addition we also have local Government system of nearly 1000 or more Local Government institutions to do this job. The Minister of Health and the Government is responsible to activate both preventive and curative operations. If the president is compelled to call the Service Forces to handle this job the there is something radically wrong with the health system in the country. The primary responsibility in this case falls on the Minister of Health. Therefore in my view the Minister should resign for his failure or the President must sack the relevant minister for failing to do his job and appoint a man or woman who can do the job properly.

Similarly disposing urban or village level garbage is a matter for the Local Government institutions. It is also the responsibility of the nine Provincial Councils. There are thousands of Local politicians and Local Government Officials and employees to do that job as well.

The present need to call the Service forces to do all these clearly shows that the government has failed in all these levels. Finally the responsibility of all these blunders, whatever the reasons may be falls on the Government. The question arises then as to why we should maintain such a government and a whole bunch of nearly 157 Ministers, 9 Governors, ministries, Departments etc packed with over 12.50,000 paid officials called public servants, spending billions of public funds.

Is this the much hyped Good Governance promised by this Government? Leaving aside good governance, how can we expect such a government to govern a country that cannot kill a mosquito and keep a city street clean of daily garbage?

Once again this clearly shows that there is no governance at all in this country today. Starting from the Parliament you go to any government institution or just walk on the road, you see utter confusion and chaos, lawlessness, inactivity and disorder. Nothing moves and nothing happens, except, political, ethnic, religious conflicts and uncertainties. Absolute lethargy, inefficiency and inactiveness reign all over. It appears as if the pulses of the whole country have stopped and the whole nation is diving fast to the Mindanao abyss, perhaps with no chance of return in the foreseeable future.

Are we not going to arrest this? Or are we going to just look on and leave the inevitable to take its toll?

Under this scenario, I wonder why we should not hand over the running of the country to the Armed Forces for few years at least, until the country comes back to normal.