The LUDDITE curse that IS the cause of our MISFORTUNE

This blog has only one purpose, namely to alert the reader to basic problems in our society and to look at underlying causes and suggest means of overcoming them.

Below is a complete round up of  mafias at work (many not listed here) who together affect adversely the quality of life of those living in Sri Lanka, that lead to our best brains educated at high cost to the state, who decide that they have had enough and leave. 

Many are those, who read this blog,  who have left these shores. 

Please take the time to read through it, add to this list, and help us OUT all these groups/organizations that work against the people, and inform the public of the true nature of the game being played so we may have a chance finally of ridding ourselves of the worst transgressors, in order to provide those who have remained with something of a life!

Of course not forgetting those who have left who have vowed to retrurn if the environment changes from insular island mentality to a more open dynamic one.

I am sorry I could not shorten it to make sense of the core problem that afflicts Sri Lanka

So here goes

Only the most productive youth of this Country understands that their biggest enemy is the “Luddite” mentality of the various groups trying to protect their own self interests

So they leave to enrich their host country!

That is called the brain drain and if we are to avoid that, or at least substantially reduce it, we must take steps to identify the reasons and if they are detrimental to the development of the country, we should take steps to rectify them.

Definition of Luddite! In the modern day context a person or group opposed to the introduction of new technology.

So who are they?

These groups are detrimental to the development of Sri Lanka

We cannot forget the biggest culprits are the 225 loiterers who are squatting in Diyawanna Oya. That group is no 1 in the list of why our youth are leaving in droves if not in waves!

If we just begin with this lot. They are the last to embrace modern technology, as that will eliminate their existence to be a nuisance value. The institutions of government must be brought up to the 22^nd century as we may as well skip the 21^st century as what we do now will affect those who are going to live their adult lives in the 22^nd Century.

We cannot afford to allow people to hang around politicians and public servants for basic services. They should be streamlined using IT to a large extent. Let’s start with merely answering the phones in Public Institutions. It takes a month of Sunday’s for a person to contact a government department, this should not be the case, if automatic phone exchanges that the mobile phone networks use, are installed, so that the relevant person can be contacted speedily.

Why do these LUDDITE Govt. servants refuse to allow this? Well they don’t want to make it convenient for the public to bypass a telephone operator, who is most of the time not in her seat, but is jabbering, or drinking tea in a refectory, as no one can pull them up or fire them! No wonder then that we have surplus bodies all doing nothing inconveniencing the public, whose very existence is a detriment to good governance!

I can write a book of a few thousand pages listing all these Luddite actions.

Other LUDDITES OF SRI LANKA – Let me mention a few groups that I would easily define as Luddite and there are many more to add to this.

THASL – Tourist Hotels Association of Sri Lanka, which as a problem with Air B&B and want to regulate who is allowed to build new hotels in Colombo.

CTU – Ceylon Teachers Union who wants to protect their members’ interests and so do not want the best teachers in the land to teach our kids and be paid based on their quality, instead of years of service and seniority!

CEBU – Ceylon Electricity Board Union that wants to protect its high pay, when they are providing electricity that is completely unncompetitive to business who have to compete globally in order to export.

JVP – Which is in a world of their own, not realizing that the world has changed, and the youth they purport to befriend are cursing them for preventing them from studying, learning the latest ideas, and finishing their exams in double quick time, so as to obtain remunerative employment.

C of C – The Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka that does its utmost to protect its members from international competition, who think anything imported tariff free is going to lose business for their members. They should instead encourage competition, so their members can be more efficient to compete with the rest of the world. Don’t forget the only efficient company is one that exports, as they are competing with the Rest of the World to be better. Others are just protected, and so don’t serve the consumer, who ends up paying more.

Farmer Organizations – they wrongly want price protection for paddy, when they are the world’s most water using farmers. This water waste cannot be permitted anymore and there has been no effort to diversify, produce quality rice for home consumption that is healthy, and diversify crops towards those in demand.

The Three wheeler drivers association – the Best thing that happened to SL was UBER, which will demonstrate the inefficiency of the trade, where often poor villagers are being gouged higher fares, due to poor competition, and now with just an app determining how low the fare can go, gives rise to a more efficient service. In this way, all inefficient and unproductive drivers immediately disappear, where only efficient high earning drivers remain and we won’t see the level of loitering in public places that take place of youngster in three wheelers, once this concept spreads nationwide, forcing them to be in productive employment. Surely isn’t this a good thing?

GMOA – They are arguably after the MPs the most powerful lobby group in the Country that holds the people to ransom, demanding rights that don’t deserve, and for which they have not committed anything. They merely believe that due to an z score lottery, they get a place in a University that churns them out poor educated, that somehow they deserve a place in society with privileges that others, actually with a much better bedside manner are not allowed to get!

BASL – the lawyers are a really stinking lot. They make no effort at arbitration, and to resolve conflict from coming to litigation as their fees depend on extending cases. This causes trauma in the community for which they are directly responsible. The 5Million pending cases are proof of their treachery.

Unions Representing the Municipal Workers – They determine the hours of work, and conditions of work as the employer is local government. No wonder then that the real work was privatized so that it gets done! If Municipalities were privatized, just imagine how quickly every service would be performed for the citizenry, and how efficiently. There won’t be useless white elephants like swimming pools that no one uses and are costly to maintain.

The Organization representing the 10 Largest Private Contractors! – they decide on what contracts to bid on and what not to, so the Government ends up appointing the lowest bidder by default, so the gravy train can be spread around. In this way the Country loses billions as all contractors are awarded with very high profit margins, and are so inefficiently carried out, as cost is not as much a factor as it should be.

CPC trade unions - Many in the Petroleum Trade unions do not come to work and are signed for. Traditionally it was a gravy train to give jobs to loyal party workers as a sinecure, which adds a huge price to the losses they incur, which is paid for in the end by the General Public or by borrowing from Overseas.

State Printing Corporation Employees – They import paper to make a commission and some paper stocks are rotting in warehouses not being used, and the unions will not allow their workers who do little or nothing, while Rs5B school book printing contract is farmed out to private printers. Does it not make sense to disband this institution all together to save the state large amounts in paper imports and unnecessary wage costs.

The 20 largest businessmen in Sri Lanka who don’t export, are leaching on the state – They have the MPs in their pocket doing their bidding for them, to ensure their oligopolistic businesses are protected by tariffs that have increased the cost of living of the people living in Sri Lanka, who then have to leave to find better value for money for their labor!

Conclusion

I hope it is clear to the reader that the LUDDITES who effectively run this country are the cause of so much tragedy that make the LTTE look like angels. So who are the true traitors and terrorists one may have to ask, if one really understands the way the economy works and how the people benefit from development.

If the people are to wrest control of the Country from these special interest groups, there has to be a sea change in the understanding of the power of the Consumer in Sri Lanka to effect change, from all the people and many more who are leaching money from the hapless, long suffering and hopeless public.

Of course the Public comprise the above groups too, but if all the people realize what they are doing is not in the public interest, and in the end they too are part of the problem and not the solution, we can have a greater understanding on what needs to be done to make the correction and to have the leadership we need to carry out policies for a change that benefits all and not be tinkered to benefit a few.

I just remembered the biggest culprits in the Sri Lanka game of Luddites Rule are the Bankers who effectively have held the whole country in a VICE LIKE GRIP that has prevented good people from access to funds, and which has doled out funds in large amounts to questionable Luddite Businessmen for kickbacks.

Needless to say we need an upright young leader with a vision to communicate this scandalous state of affairs to the people in order to get the needed change via the ballot box.

We are killing our tourist industry, when good ideas are torn down, like the Railway Unions who refused to allow the profitable and highly desirable private train carriages from operating between Colombo and Badulla, that could have eventually led to a very popular and lucrative tourist attraction of train travel in Sri Lanka. This was the opening we needed to spread privatization to improve the quality of public transport, and this was not allowed due to LUDDITE behavior.

Need I provide any more examples to you my readers? Doesn’t the behavior of the aforesaid and then some make you sick to the stomach? Where is the media in all this? All of these restrictive practices, result in increasing imports and reducing exports, all of which affect the balance of payments and the exchange rate. So our growth is stifled by all of the above working against this Country!!!