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Tharuna Aruna Centres, have duped 2000 unemployed graduates, after forcing on them a grueling physical training course, promising government employment.

By Charles Perera.

The unemployed graduates numbering about 2000 were promised government employment to fill around 14000 available posts in the government sector.
The government recruited them and provided them a three months training course, in newly established , Tharuna Aruna Centres. They were told that they will be given permanent employment in the government sector after the training course.

These are young men and women , some of them from very poor familes in Kandy, who followed this course at the Tharuna Aruna Centre in Kandy. The strange training given to them was physical, including jogging early in the morning, and marching, and dancing. The OIC of the Centre is a Major from Sri Lanka Army, and the physical training coaches are Army officers, as said by the trainees. These army men forced the trainees to do jogging under threat, that if they do not do jogging they have the necessary medicine to make them do so.

After three months of physically exhausting training course, these hopeful trainees were told that there are no employment possibilities in the public sector for them, and therefore, they should find suitable employment in the private sector.

The poor children disappointed, and discouraged by this unexpected turn of event and the injustice caused to them by the governments failure to keep its pledge to provide them employment after the training, were disarrayed , and decided to appeal for government intervention. Therefore, the unemployed graduates Island wide, who had followed these Tharuna Aruna Training Course, formed an Association .

The convener of this Association is Mr.Sujitha Kuruwita. He is also an unemployed graduate who went through the same course. They held a joint protest march, and asked the intervention of the Skills Development Minister Siripathy Sooriarachchi,. The Minister did not even want to meet them, let alone giving them a promise to look into the matter.

Some of the unemployed graduates who went through this course in Kandy met the Chief Minister of Kandy at the Kachcheri, to explain to him the predicament into which they had been put. The Chief Minister had told them that he is unaware of the existence of the Tharuna Aruna Centres.
On the following day when these trainees, went to the Centre the OIC sent them away and asked them not to come back. They were physically fatigued, having gone through an arduous (military)training course, in the guise of a training for government employment, and mentally confused and helpless having been turned out without any assurance of the promised employment in the government service.

Now these unemployed graduate trainees have again been recalled to follow a six months training course for employment in the private sector, under threat by the OIC of the Kandy Tharuna Aruna Centre, that if they do not join this six months training course, they will be considered as having left the Centre, thus confiscating all their rights for their future employment. Some of them through fear, that they will loose there rights for future employment had given their names for private sector employment. This had happened only in the Kandy Tharuna Aruna Centre, and apparently not in other Centres.

Most of them come from poor families, and their families have made lot of sacrifice for these young children of theirs to follow tuition classes, to get a University Degree which they thought would assure their children a bright future. But having got the degree after all the pains and aches that go with studies and exams, they are only insulted, by the government, instead of treating them more humanly and giving them at least an assurance of the promised jobs in the government sector.

This letter is written by one who is close to one of these poor students, hoping that some one who reads this will take up the matter with an appropriate officer, a Minister or a politician to intervene, and see that justice is meted out to these young men and women. And inquire (who and) how these Tharuna Aruna Centres were set up, and who is responsible for them. For any information or assistance please contact: charlesperera@hotmail.com.

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