{"id":52148,"date":"2016-02-18T13:51:13","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T20:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=52148"},"modified":"2016-02-18T13:51:13","modified_gmt":"2016-02-18T20:51:13","slug":"a-simmering-volcano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/02\/18\/a-simmering-volcano\/","title":{"rendered":"A simmering volcano"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editorial Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

February 16, 2016, 7:14 pm<\/span>
\nThe riot police yesterday liberally used water cannon and tear gas to disperse a protest by thousands of unemployed graduates who took to the streets in Colombo, demanding jobs. Their protests are not of recent origin. Successive governments have attempted ad hoc remedies without addressing the root causes of the problem.<\/p>\n

The problem of graduate unemployment cannot be wished away. Nor can it be solved with tear gas, water cannon, road blocks and the appointment of various committees. There does not seem to be an alternative to recruiting graduates to the state service as a short-term solution if the present situation is to be defused. A long-term solution requires a well-thought out national strategy.<\/p>\n

It is being argued in some quarters that thousands of graduates remain unemployed because they are simply unemployable. This assertion is not without some merit, but the question is what successive governments have done, all these years, to make them employable. There is a school of thought that university education needs to be geared towards employment if graduates are to secure employment without staging street protests. While there is a pressing need for enabling graduates to acquire what the job market requires, politicians and policymakers should not lose sight of the fact that universities are no job training centres. The role of seats of higher learning should not be limited to churning out workers for the job market while the need for a radical overhaul of the university system cannot be overemphasised.<\/p>\n

The unemployed graduates\u2019 protests serve as an eloquent argument against the proposed Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA) which, if implemented, will facilitate an influx of foreign workers here at the expense of educated Sri Lankan youth. A country with jobless, frustrated youth brimming with antipathy towards society is a simmering volcano.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, if ECTA is inked at India\u2019s behest, it will certainly make an already bad situation worse. The Portuguese got the King of Kotte to agree to let them secure a toehold and went on to build a massive fort. This has been our experience with all the pacts with foreign powers throughout history.<\/p>\n

India cannot be so keen to sign ETCA out of any love for Sri Lanka. It was only the other day that we published an article which revealed that 250 persons with PhDs had been among hundreds of thousands of candidates for a peon\u2019s job in that country. Why Sri Lankan professionals including doctors are opposing ETCA is not difficult to understand. Old dogs, it is said, bark not for nothing. (We hope government pundits won\u2019t accuse us of denigrating professionals by calling them canines!)<\/p>\n

The Government Medical Officers\u2019 Association (GMOA) has been a pillar of strength for the opponents of ETCA. It is only natural that not-so-surreptitious attempts are being made to debilitate and silence the GMOA and its leaders are being harassed. If the powerful doctors\u2019 union is silenced the resistance campaign against ETCA is bound to fizzle out. This, we believe, is the battle plan of the proponents of ETCA all out to bulldoze their way through.<\/p>\n

The signing of ill-conceived pacts like ETCA will only swell the ranks of educated youth staging street protests demanding jobs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editorial Courtesy The Island February 16, 2016, 7:14 pm The riot police yesterday liberally used water cannon and tear gas to disperse a protest by thousands of unemployed graduates who took to the streets in Colombo, demanding jobs. Their protests are not of recent origin. Successive governments have attempted ad hoc remedies without addressing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}