Pri's blog

Daily Mirror, Tuesday, June 15, 2010 The NGO Secretariat which was previously operated under the Social Services Ministry and thereafter the Internal Affairs Ministry now comes under the purview of the Defence Ministry, following the new Parliament taking office. “The NGO Secretariat is now under the Ministry of Defence, and the Defence Ministry will be working with them,” Media Centre for National Security Director Laxman Hullugalle told the Daily Mirror. He reiterated that this was by no means a measure taken to monitor NGOs but a simple change in administration. Earlier the Passport office, the Immigration and Emigration Department and the NGO Secretariat were under the purview of the Ministry of Internal Affairs headed by the then Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayaka.

Below extracts from a message from Jean-Claude Roffe, Chairman of the Technical Committee, Chairman of the Organising Committee, 16th IRF World Meeting. For the uninitiated, the IRF is the International Road Federation, and the message was entitled Paving with Passion! " Congratulations to everyone and my warmest thanks ! to you, the 1,500 passionate participants who came to Lisbon, to you, the 100 passionate men and women who helped organize the event, to you, the 80 passionate exhibitors and sponsors who worked hard to support the IRF in 2010 Despite the economic crisis, this event was still a success, thanks to so many strong-willed members of the Road industry..... Once again, it was clearly demonstrated that Roads are a vector of exchange and development, creating both wealth and growth. Today, responsible development strategies adopted by the Road Industry along with a number of research projects that are currently underway should help pave the way to more sustainabl...

I don't have television - or to be very precise, I have yet to connect my television set! So I missed this interview when it was aired on Al Jazeera. It was a topic of conversation at the ADB mocktail party on the 28th (mocktail because it was the Vesak Poya holiday so all we had were non-alcoholic drinks) and is certainly watching. From my own perspective two things stuck out - the sexism in the interview - would H.E. have tolerated such hard hitting direct questions from a man? and also the blanket vilification of NGOs, not good for the third sector.