Rs. 9 million donation to satisfy SLPA Chairman’s aspirations Monday, 22 April 2013 Chairman of Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA), Priyath Bandu Wickremamuni who hails from an ordinary family in Embilipitiya was educated at the Embilipitiya Central College and received his degree from the Moratuwa University. He has joined the Royal Colombo Golf Club to uplift his social status and has donated Rs. 9 million to the club for its avurudhu festival. The sum of Rs. 9 million was paid through two cheques. It was well known racketeer and SLPA Managing Director, Captain Nihal Keppetipola who had helped Wickremamuni to get a membership at the Golf Club. Keppetipola is also a business partner of the SLPA Chairman. It was the SLPA that had funded the Rs. 200,000 membership fee of the Golf Club for the Chairman. Wickremamuni is trying to cover his village background by becoming a member of the Golf Club and has also spent SLPA monies for cricket as well. He spends the Authority’s monies amounting to Rs. 2.5 million every month on the SLPA cricket team. His intention is to enter the Sri Lanka Cricket board by playing first 11 cricket at national level. Although he had supported the game of Volleyball in the past, his dream of climbing the social ladder has now pushed him to support games like golf and cricket that have large numbers of sponsors. After being born to an ordinary family in Embilipitiya, this person has now built a house similar to a palace in Rajagiriya. The cost to build the house had been footed by a construction company that does business with the SLPA. His friends have found it hilarious that he has dropped the “muni” part in his name Wickremamuni in order to change his caste before changing his social standing. He now identifies himself as Dr. Priyath B. Wickrema. There’s a separate story about how he purchased his PhD in London.

Afghan interpreters could be offered relocation to Britain

David Cameron expected to make decision on Tuesday affecting up to 1,100 who risked lives helping UK forces in Afghanistan

Sunday 21 April 2013 

An Afghan interpreter covers his face. Interpreters could be in grave danger from reprisals once Nato forces leave Afghanistan in 2014. Photograph: John D Mchugh

Hundreds of Afghan interpreters who have risked their lives working with UK forces in Helmand province could be offered relocation to Britain this week when David Cameron reviews the issue at a meeting of the national security council.

The prime minister has been given three broad options and is expected to make a decision on Tuesday that could affect up to 1,100 Afghan nationals – including more than 600 interpreters, who could be in grave danger from reprisals once Nato forces leave Afghanistan in 2014.

The most comprehensive option involves offering a relocation package similar to the one given to local interpreters after the Iraq war.

But two cheaper ideas also being considered include offering the interpreters a series of "economic incentives" to remain in Afghanistan, and requiring them to apply for asylum in the usual way, without preferential treatment.

This would infuriate campaigners, who have argued the interpreters must be given immediate special status as a reward for the dangerous work they have undertaken.

Twenty interpreters have died since 2001 – five were abducted and murdered by insurgents. Dozens of others have been wounded. The US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand have all granted Afghan interpreters the right to asylum.

The Taliban has declared a death sentence on all Afghans working with Nato forces in the country, and some members of the national security council have privately expressed fears the UK will look miserly, and lacking in compassion, unless the interpreters are given the option to live in the UK.

The interpreters are paid well compared with most Afghans – about £1,000 a month – but the cash cannot protect them from revenge attacks.

"You can offer the interpreters every economic incentive in the world to stay in their own country, but that isn't going to remove the threat posed to them," said one Whitehall source.

Last week senior military figures and politicians joined calls for the interpreters to be offered asylum, saying the country had a "moral obligation" to protect them.

In an open letter, the former Liberal Democrat leader Lord Ashdown and General Mike Jackson, head of the army during the Iraq war, said: "The British military's job in Afghanistan would have been impossible without local interpreters, who have risked their lives and made extraordinary sacrifices just like British soldiers.

"After the Iraq war the UK gave Iraqi interpreters asylum in this country, but – shamefully – Britain is the only Nato country yet to do this for Afghan interpreters."

Though the Foreign Office has promised to help the interpreters, there has been criticism of the scheme offered to Iraqi interpreters, which defence officials have said "is expensive and complex to administer".

But in the latest Commons defence select committee report on Afghanistan, Mark Sedwill, a former director general for Afghanistan and Pakistan at the Foreign Office, said it would be possible to repatriate staff and for them to start a new life.

"We employ a vast number of interpreters and highly skilled people within the [Nato] mission. As we have seen elsewhere, if given lump sums and the right kind of training, they can come out and start setting up businesses of their own," he said.