Chanaka Bandarage

The late Minister Gamini Dissanayke In the early 1990s stated that considering the number of professionals and technicians that Australia has absorbed into their country from Sri Lanka, what Sri Lanka has offered to Australia’s economic development far outweighs the amount of aid/assistance that Australia has given to Sri Lanka. He was spot on.

There is an enormous brain drain from 3^rd world countries like Sri Lanka to the 1^st world.

Almost all developed counties have migration/employment programs targeted to attract the best brains/talent of the 3^rd world.

By offering scholarships to professionals and students, these countries target them also.  Once their studies are over, these students are quickly absorbed into these western economies. Thus, rather than returning to the mother country, these students continue to remain in 1^st world countries.  Later, they take up citizenship of those countries.

This form of conduct is highly unethical on the part of the 1^st world economies. They know about this but remain silent. On and off they throw few aid at us.

Because we lose our best brains/talent, we suffer tremendously. We continue to remain poor.

In Sri Lanka qualified/experienced doctors, nurses and other medical professionals, engineers, accountants, architects leave the country in droves. The biggest Sri Lankan diaspora population after Colombo city lives is in Melbourne, Australia.

Today in Sri Lanka we have a chronic shortage of highly skilled manpower. 

Almost all of our hospitals have acute shortage of specialist doctors and experienced nurses. How many people, especially children, are needlessly dying as a result?

Put simply, the West prospers at our expense. When they colonised us they did the same – plundered our wealth and built their countries.

In this context what Nalinda Jayathissa stated in WHO, Geneva last week is commendable. He asked the WHO to look into this behaviour of the 1^st world countries. He was specifically referring to the plunder of our best medical professionals brains by the West

Only a brave person can make such a statement in an international forum. Well done Nalinda!

It is sad some YouTubers are severely criticising Nalinda Jayathissa for his statement.  They say that the West should have the unfettered right to recruit our best brains willy nilly (like they do now).  The writer states these countries should not meddle with our students who go there on scholarships funded by those countries. Upon completion of the scholarship study, they should be repatriated to Sri Lanka advising them that they should serve in Sri Lanka for at least 5 years before applying for migration/employment.

These YouTubers are not concerned that the country rapidly loses its talent, and they are desperately needed to build our country.

These cynics do not love Sri Lanka. Their past behaviour shows us how most of the time they have acted against the best interest of Sri Lanka, in particular Buddhism. Their motive is to severely criticise the government’s every act/move; whether they are good or bad is immaterial to them.

These cynics worked to topple the governments from 2015 onwards. On each occasion they succeeded. Now they try to topple this new government. They seem wanting Sri Lanka to remain in poor and end up in fragmentation?