Give us jobs, if not we burn ourselves – say graduates — Sri Lanka Education Forum

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Give us jobs, if not we burn ourselves – say graduates

Posted on October 5, 2007 / 4 Comments

(Lanka-E-news, 2007 Oct 04, 9.30 PM) Two thousand and eighty eight job expecting graduates who were trained under Tharuna Aruna program commenced a sit in campaign near the Telecom roundabout today (04) morning.

The Chairman of the Graduates Collective Prasad Bandara Herath said to Lanka-e-News that none of the 2088 graduates were granted jobs despite the promises of the Ministers and the Presidential Secretary.

He said that this was the seventh protest campaign and if the President would not give a satisfactory solution to their problems a fast
unto death would be commenced tomorrow and it can end up with setting ablaze to the bodies.

The secretary of the union Thilak Rasnayaka said that the current Ministers were ushered to their positions by them and neither a Minister nor a secretary nor a single adviser came to talk to them.

Police closed the road since the protestors sat in the Telecom roundabout. The photos depict the graduates protesting blocking the road. The protestors burnt the shown written pledges.

Source: http://www.lankaenews.com/English/news.php?id=4742

4 Comments

Justmal
October 5, 2007, 11:41 am
- Reply
Let them burn themselves. Free education is a privilege, not a right. Finding a job is their responsibility, not ours. The Sri Lankan taxpayers don’t owe these idiots anything.
Concerned Student
October 5, 2007, 12:21 pm
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This is bad journalism all round. Who are these graduates? What is their University? What degree did they do? What is the graduate collective? Is it the Maha shishya sangamaya? OR the anthar vishwavidyala shishya bala mandalaya? JVP or other political party? And who are they to speak in behalf of the whole student movement.

This is outrageous. Get your facts right, and stop attracting anger. It’s just as bad as the graduates attracting sympathy. We sacrifice so much of our time to build a good image and brand and you ruin it all with a simple post.

Do you think that just because there are minority extremists like JHU, the whole Sri Lankan society is racist and advocates of war? Please be more responsible when you write something in a supposedly unbiased forum. It compromises the integrity of the whole website.
Concerned citizen
October 5, 2007, 1:36 pm
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Dear Concerned Student,

This was the lead news in today’s Lankadeepa. I think your concerns are addressed there.

I do not see anyone talking about racism here. As we all know JHU has no presence in universities. So why bring JHU to this?
Kulendra
October 7, 2007, 4:36 pm
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Im totally agreeing with JustMal on this one. For quite a long time, I have been finding that demanding free education and a then a job afterwards is pretty ridiculous. And no, it didnt change even after we graduated from the university. One can argue that it is the duty of the government to create jobs. I agree to this on a large sense, that by creating jobs the country would have its productivity increased. However this is no whats happening with the ‘jobless graduates’.

From what I know, most of these people were absorbed in to positions which already didnt have work. So mostly what they did was to hang around, go home and get the salary for it. (Nothing much different from you average government servant, but I found this even more ridiculous). So what I would suggest for these people is to either gain a competency in the growing fields and if they are not capable of that, tough luck.