Other Samarajiva: Government Phone Service
Why not. More weird photos.
I think now is a time for action. I’m trying to start with me. For years I’ve railed against the government, but I’ve never voted or stood in the street for anything. I’ve said we need freedom of speech yet never really practiced it outside of this blog. So me personally, I’m trying. I also read an article by my father in LBO today which is something concrete along the same lines. Rather than simply saying we need to address Tamil demands it’s picking one demand (government service in Tamil language) and offering an idea to address it (expanding the phone hotline).
Let us take as an example the lowest hanging fruit: enabling a Tamil-speaking citizen to interact with the government on mundane everyday matters in her own language.
I am robbed; I am threatened; I am mugged. I need to communicate with the Police. Is it too much to ask that I be able to do this in language I am comfortable in, without having to take my neighbor along as an interlocutor? It appears to be so, in much of the country today.
We simply do not have enough bilingual government servants, even though we have more people working for government, per capita, than any place on the planet. Mr Lionel Fernando tried to solve this problem; Mr D.E.W. Gunasekera is still at it. But the evidence is clear. Conventional approaches are not working.
The solution is staring us in the face. The ubiquitous telephone.
With just a little tweaking of the 1919 Government Information Center, we can enable any citizen anywhere to speak to any government servant in any official language of his choice. Even today, 1919 is one place in government where questions are answered in all three official languages, politely. Why not just extend it into a full-fledged government interpretation service?
It may be simple or it may be wrong, but we might as well consider it and other ideas and start debating and moving the country forward. I think we’re all aware of the myriad things wrong and it is important to point them out. However, we have to start making positive changes as well. Beginning with ourselves.
Anyways, the article is worth a read, and perhaps a comment, and a think. More to the point we need more ideas beyond ‘this sucks’ or ‘this doesn’t work’. God knows I’ve done that. We need ideas that can actually improve peoples lives and which can be actioned now. As in, I think we’ve got the diagnosis. It’s time for the cure.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
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Sri Lankan domestics never say anything, they just stop coming. My maid just stopped coming and when I finally pressed her she said I needed to get a washing machine. I was hoping to ride this one out, but I’ve run out of underwear and I have no choice. I finally caved and bought a washing machine, from 
I think this is a very good idea.
What will the next steps be ?
Will there be our people offering classes to government servants ? Or can we atleast start a grassroot movement of a single Tamil class in a single government department that can be offered during a one hour slot once a week ?
Can a Tamil speaking friend of ours who lives in Colombo volunteer to visit a government department once week for one hour slot and train 2 govt officials that are behind the counter ?
I know that there are tons of Tamil classes at the Open Uni and some of the govt departments send their people there and and often need to book months and months in advance. The uptake of the tamil language is freat. They even teach it in schools these days and I personally know the students love it.
What we lack are grassroot movements of action.
Also here is an interesting question, when we lived in France we learnt to speak French. When my family moved to Germany we had to learn German. Yes, there are tons of translators but I have seen also seen plenty of Tamil families like mine who are multilingual. When we lived in Sri Lanka, as kids ,we were taught Singalease in our school as well as our parents encouraged us to learn language. I think this is lacking in the Tamil families who live there right now. They refuse to learn singalease due to false pride. I call this false because they have no problem in learning French or German when they come here. I degress.
Yes, it is a super idea. So what is the next practical step ?
Let me know if any resource persons are needed to train any govt officials late next year as that is when I will be in Colombo from August to November 2010.
It’s always good to volunteer to train people, I guess I could try and track people down.
The point with the 1919 service is that training in government departments isn’t actually required, though. The phone service is run by a private company and already has Sinhala/Tamil/English agents. The thing is to just scale the system up. I suppose sending a mail to info@icta.lk would be a start, just mentioning that this idea is out there. Dunno.