Truth
about UNICEF and emergency rations
Dr. Kingsley Heendeniya
Courtesy The Island 26-11-2007
I refer to the interdiction of a container load of emergency
food rations by the UNICEF for allege use by their staff when there
is expected escalation of the on-going fight with the LTTE. I am familiar
with this type of activity by international organisations such as USAID,
UNICEF and International Red Cross Society. I was the Director of Health
at the Sri Lanka Red Cross, and thereafter Consultant in Health Services
and Research to International Agencies such as UNICEF, UNFPA, WHO, World
Bank. I can straightaway say that the WHO has a clean record and their
foreign staff are properly qualified.
That is not so particularly at the UNICEF and the International Red
Cross. They employed junior nurses, dental nurses, public health inspectors,
ambulance drivers and even an anaesthetist from donor countries to 'instruct'
and 'supervise' me, disporting a luxurious life-style they never knew
in their home countries.
They used equipment, vehicles and material to serve the LTTE. I left
my job at the Red Cross after I exposed a massive racket with connivance
of these foreigners to transport drugs, surgical material, urea and
bombs using even ambulances. The main conduit was the Killinochchi Red
Cross Society. The army commandant of the area showed me thick files
of detections when I met him to get an interdicted ambulance released.
It had been caught transporting to Colombo a bomb hidden under the floor
board with a bogus patient on a saline drip. He summoned the President
of the Kilinochchi Red Cross Society who travelled with me and severely
warned him: 'I know you. Do not try to put this doctor in trouble'.
This army major was later killed. I remember he was a young Muslim.
I forget his name. Though I complained to the government of the day
- during President Premadasa - nothing happened and even selling the
Red Cross flag at 10,000 rupees to escape checking vehicles by the army
continued. Readers may recollect the public hue and cry I raised at
that time.
The government should mount a thorough investigation into this affair
and send unqualified and dishonest foreigners home without delay.
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