Sunday, January 13, 2013

Eluthumadduvaal to Kodikaamam, A9 Highway, Sri Lanka.





1 comment:

Philip Veerasingam said...

Pictures showing part of islandwide road development.

Kodikamam is between Elephant Pass and Chavakachcheri in the peninsula, the area that has been upgrading over the last 1 ½ years or so.

A master plan will modernize Jaffna town itself along with about 20 other towns elsewhere concurrently, so that no segment of people would grumble about preferential attention.
The speed of construction is dizzying by our former bullock cart standards.

The large Nugegoda leisure park came up in just 9 months without prior foundations stones, speeches and the like.
At its opening last week the Prez was expected but did not arrive. I guess too many projects being completed at the same time. I drove past the area daily wondering what the hell it was all about. Root balling etc in.
The Salvinia clogged canal by the side, a former eye sore is now one of appeal regularly maintained.
The Pola market just above railway station too came up with no drum beating. Comparable to the one I saw in Melbourne but smaller.

People do have short memories as noted among the blue blooded’ Colombites, for whom a ‘widened road is un-necessarily wide, a narrow road needs to be widened’ ‘ ‘a village 8 foot concrete path will perish soon as the contractors used more of sand than cement’ type.

They have well forgotten the guns, bullets, bombs, blasts, mines, village massacres of 2009. Now all silent, the road traffic leading a toll of 3000- 4000 per year. They who use these roads most, grumble.

I was recently present at the Health Ministry doctors presentation of the services given by them during IDP era(-yes, era, it is history now).

But most violent agitators I noted at the meeting two weeks previously( the regular lot) opted not to attend this meeting down Kynsey Rd at ICES- International Centre for Ethnic Studies.
We were too full of computer data for them to cope with- I guess-and they anticipated problems! Notably absent was one tall woman.

So possibly the ‘S’ in the ICES should read Strife.
jksw