Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2016-03-30

Establishment of a Database of Resource Persons with Bilingual/Trilingual Competency at District Level by the Office for National Unity and Reconciliation

- The Constitution has guaranteed the right of every citizen to communicate with the Government in one's own mother tongue. Although, the Government has taken various steps to enforce this right from time to time, there still exists a considerable dearth of officers in the public institutions who have the ability to work in the two official languages namely Sinhala and Tamil (bilingual) and the three languages namely Sinhala, English and Tamil (trilingual). The proposal made by H.E. the President Maithripala Sirisena for the establishment of a database of resource persons with bilingual/trilingual competency, at district level, as an interim measure and to make such information in the database open to all public institutions, non-governmental institutions and the general public and to get their services to public institutions, at instances where necessary, was approved by the Cabinet.