{"id":48636,"date":"2016-09-24T01:05:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-24T05:05:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=48636"},"modified":"2016-09-24T01:12:54","modified_gmt":"2016-09-24T05:12:54","slug":"epdp-motion-in-npc-wanting-chief-minister-wigneswarans-intervention-in-uduvil-issue-denied-by-tna-councillors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/?p=48636","title":{"rendered":"EPDP Motion in NPC Wanting Chief Minister Wigneswaran’s Intervention in “Uduvil Issue” Denied by TNA Councillors"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dharisha Bastians<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Northern Provincial Council (NPC) on Thursday denied an opposition motion requesting Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran to intervene in the Uduvil Girls\u2019 College crisis, where students and parents have been protesting against the appointment of a new principal for the school. <\/p>\n

The Uduvil school crisis was raised at the NPC just hours before retiring headmistress Shiranee Mills formally vacated the principal\u2019s bungalow inside the school premises. <\/p>\n

Mills handed over her keys to the bungalow and left the premises last afternoon, Daily FT learns, signalling that the crisis at the church-administered elite girls\u2019 school was finally reaching its end. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Uduvil Girls\u2019 College, a private school managed by the Jaffna Diocese of the Church of South India (JDCSI), was plunged into crisis earlier this month after past pupils, students and a group of parents cried foul what they referred to as the \u2018forcible retirement\u2019 of outgoing headmistress, Shiranee Mills.<\/p>\n

Suneetha Jebaratnam, a teacher at UGC for 30 years and the former Vice Principal, formally took over duties from Principal Mills last Monday (12), but calls continued from some groups for the former headmistress\u2019 reinstatement. <\/p>\n

Outgoing Principal Mills vacated the premises shortly after NPC Opposition Leader Sinnadurai Thavarajah of the Eelam People\u2019s Democratic Party (EPDP) raised the Uduvil school crisis as a matter of public importance in the Council on Thursday, appealing to Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran to appoint a commission to investigate the irregularities and \u2018high-handed\u2019 actions by some teachers and clergy during the protests by the school girls and past pupils. <\/p>\n

Thavarajah said he had raised the matter at the NPC because of appeals by a Parents\u2019 Association that had been established after the issues at Uduvil Girls College had begun. The petition submitted by the parents to him had included allegations that some teachers had misbehaved and that some teachers were not qualified to teach, Thavarajah added. <\/p>\n

Thavarajah\u2019s proposal was strongly opposed by NPC members Emmanuel Arnold, Ayoob Azmin and Kesavan Sajanthan, who insisted that Uduvil Girls\u2019 College was a private missionary school.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe provincial council has nothing to do with the school,\u201d Sajanthan told Daily FT. <\/p>\n

The TNA council members accused the EPDP of \u2018fishing in troubled waters\u2019. \u201cOn a previous occasion too, the EPDP had unlawfully interfered in the Uduvil Girls\u2019 College issue with this principal, the TNA members charged. <\/p>\n

Sajanthan said the EPDP member was attempting to raise new allegations against the school, including the abuse of students. <\/p>\n

As the TNA councillors resisted Thavarajah\u2019s motion, both Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran, and Provincial Education Minister Thambyrajah Gurukularajah who recently called for Mills\u2019 reinstatement as principal, had remained silent. <\/p>\n

The Council finally decided that the complaint could be filed at the Public Petitions Committee through the NPC Chairman, which would look into the complaint and report back to the Council, Thavarajah told Daily FT. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am not supporting any group. I have no interest in the appointment of the principals. My concern is a law and order issue only, when it came to some violent behaviour towards protesting students,\u201d Thavarajah told Daily FT after his attempt to get the Chief Minister to intervene was unsuccessful. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea was not that the Chief Minister should interfere,\u201d the NPC Opposition Leader added, \u201cbut that it must be looked at as a law and order issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

Uduvil Girls\u2019 College is a 192-year-old school set up by American missionaries in Jaffna in 1824 and went on to become the first boarding school for girls in Asia. It is entirely privately funded by a trust set up by the American Mission, which also funds the historic Jaffna College. Both schools are administered by the JDCSI. <\/p>\n

The recent crisis at UGC was rooted in an acrimonious church split which occurred in 2005. The Church of the American Ceylon Mission (CACM), which broke away from the main church strongly supported an extension of service for Principal Mills.<\/p>\n

Courtesy:Daily Mirror<\/em><\/p>\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dharisha Bastians The Northern Provincial Council (NPC) on Thursday denied an opposition motion requesting Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran to intervene in the Uduvil Girls\u2019 College crisis, where students and parents have been protesting against the appointment of a new principal for the school. The Uduvil school crisis was raised at the NPC just hours …<\/p>\n

Continue reading ‘EPDP Motion in NPC Wanting Chief Minister Wigneswaran’s Intervention in “Uduvil Issue” Denied by TNA Councillors’ »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48636"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48637,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48636\/revisions\/48637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dbsjeyaraj.com\/dbsj\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}