Author: Jekhan Aruliah
Dragonboats come to Jaffna
By Jekhan Aruliah Northwind Projects, a team promoting sporting and other activities in the Northern Province, successfully brought together the Sri Lankan Navy, the Northern Provincial Council’s Ministry of Education, Cultural Affairs, Sport and Youth Affairs and the Jaffna District Fishermen’s Co-operative Society Union’s Federation. They came together to kick-off dragonboat racing, canoeing, and the […]
COVID-19: out of chaos comes opportunity. But opportunity must be seized to become reality.
By Jekhan Aruliah Tinned fish to tin houses: in the weeks of the 2020 Corona curfews we frequently saw on television and on Facebook fish in metal tins donated to families in metal huts. The Covid-19 Crisis shone a stark light on the large segment of our population in Sri Lanka living in chronic dire […]
Will Jaffna International Airport help the Northern economy take-off at last?
By Jekhan Aruliah The opening, strictly speaking the re-opening, of Jaffna International Airport (IATA airport code JAF) in October 2019 was one of the more startling events in the North since the end of the Sri Lankan Civil War in 2009. In the North we held our breaths as the promise, unfulfilled for years, approached […]
SenzMate, the Internet of Things tech company born in Jaffna
By Jekhan Aruliah I visited SenzMate a few months ago, and am only now getting around to writing about them. The reason for my hesitation has been although this is a Jaffna born company it is no longer in Jaffna. My objective in these articles is to root for businesses to move North. SenzMate had […]
Small Northern Businesses Struggle for Funding
By Jekhan Aruliah There is an old joke: “The fastest way to become a millionaire is to be a billionaire and buy an airline”. The airline will lose money so fast the billionaire will see his fortune quickly destroyed. We need look no further than our own Sri Lankan national carrier’s capacity to lose money to […]
OPINION: 90,000 Northern families in shanties or homeless. What happened to Govt. promised housing?
By Jekhan Aruliah In October last year I had the privilege of participating in the blessing of a new water well in the Killinochchi District of the Northern Province. Its construction had been funded by the UK based charity Child Aid Lanka. The family on whose land the well is built, together with neighbours who […]
Opinion: Jaffna, high literacy, low employment and lowest income. How come?
By Jekhan Aruliah Despite the Jaffna district having the second highest Literacy Rate in Sri Lanka, it does badly on employment and dismally on incomes. What’s up? I have heard it said here in Sri Lanka and abroad that unemployment is high in Jaffna because so many people don’t need to work. It is asserted […]