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Sri Lanka Army

Defender of the Nation

“We Changed Society's Attitudes on War Heroes” - President Mahinda Rajapaksa


HIS EXCELLENCY, the President Mahinda Rajapaksa during his address to the opening ceremony at Defence Services College, Colombo 02 told the gathering that he was exceptionally pleased to have been able to change common attitudes of the public about War Heroes by establishing great institutes like these for the benefit of Ranaviru children.

“I recall the memories regarding the poor plight of our War Heroes at that period of time in our society where many people did not have a positive attitude or confidence towards children of War Hero families and we were effectively able to change all of them for the sake of those siblings. Today’s opening of these facilities for the benefit of Ranaviru children will help them reach a better future. Secretary Defence visited each and every district in order to look into the grievances of those Ranaviru families and their children,” the President said.

 “We felt extremely proud and happy when we saw these children show their talents in singing, speaking and dancing. We must be more concerned about our children and should elevate their standards caring for their future. Our children must be trained not only to face country’s future challenges, but also to compete with the fast developing global trends in developed and technically advanced countries. This should be practised from primary stages. This college is blessed in many ways and enjoys potential for marked progress since Secretary Defence, down to Tri-service Commanders and the IGP, are keeping a close eye on the college’s development, in addition to its principal and teachers, I must remind,” President Rajapaksa noted.      

 “On the other hand, our love and respect for our mother tongue, country and the nation should also be promoted among these children, making them to feel proud of their motherland and our cultural heritage while simultaneously  encouraging them to enter the international arena. We declared this year, the Year of Information Technology (IT) and English.  Therefore, we must take steps to continue to teach English and IT for our children.   The percentage of IT literacy in the country was only 5% earlier.  But it has now gone up to 32 % due to projects such as “Nenasala” and IT Centres, made available for 3500 island-wide schools. We must give IT knowledge to our children from their early stages of schooling. We must also teach them to speak English. Spoken English should be separately introduced to this college and let them use English language from their childhood as the main means of school curriculum,” President Rajapaksa added.

“Not only the education, the children must be offered opportunity for sports and directed towards promotion of sports talents in the sports field. We were able to improve this school to this standard within a span of mere 3 years. I know due to heavy workload, there was hardly any time for our War Heroes and Police officers to attend to schooling matters of their loved ones. There were people who had gone on record saying any fool could wage wars or hold guns. We must change their minds and attitudes. In the wake of a milieu of such nature, we must devote our time to care for those who sacrifice their lives for the country, those who love this country and all those War Heroes who gained freedom for the society and help them mould and improve the future of their children. It is our duty to set up such schools either in Kurunegala and Trincomalee, close to working places of War Heroes at regional level in the future after obtaining necessary data and details. I firmly believe parents and children should live in the same environment together as much as possible and would be able to muster necessary strength to do so in the future”, President Rajapaksa concluded. (See separate Photo Story on this page)