The announcement was made in parliament as the government responded to questions on how to stop deserters from leaving the military.
The Ministry responded that benefits for members of the armed forces had to be increased, including those allocated in the last budget, which awarded Rs.100,000 at the birth of the third child of any member of the security forces, and to those who are serving in the Police force as well.
More than 7,000 soldiers had received the grant from the government.
See our earlier post: 2012 budget fosters militarisation (21 November 2011)
Below is an extract from our earlier post: Sri Lanka’s monoethnic military (27 June 2011)
Prof. Brian Blodgett, Director of the History and Military Studies Programs for the American Public University, published a study of Sri Lanka’s military in 2004. In it he notes how,
“in 1962, a policy of recruiting only from the Sinhalese Buddhist community was instituted. This was the beginning of an ethnically pure army.”
Prof. Stanley Tambiah of Harvard University published a book length comment, ‘Ethnic Fratricide and the Dismantling of Democracy’, just two years after Sri Lanka’s conflict began. In it he noted,
Also see our earlier post: Army's Sinhalese blood is in Tamils - senior military official (10 January 2014)“[Today, in 1986] the armed forces are filled with Sinhalese and the Tamils are excluded from serving in them. … There has been virtually no recruitment of Tamils into the armed forces, and very little into the police force, for nearly thirty years.”