Given below is an email sent by Mr. Mohan Mendis to the Consumer Affairs Authority.
Guess it is now time for the CBN/LBN Customers follow the example from Mr. Mohan and write to the relevant people. Mr. Mohan is also forwarding email to all the newspapers in this country. This is being posted on this blog upon his request.
If anyone of you out there have sent letters or emails to any individual please post the sent email or letter under this post as a comment inclusive of your email address so that anyone can confirm the authencity of the email.
Dear Sir,
I had the opportunity to watch part of your live discussion of ITN last night & I thought it was best that I direct my problem to you (assuming that you had not touched on the issue last night) as I don't think I have seen any press reports on your intervention on this fiasco that has been enacted between the CID & Cable/Satellite TV service providers during the last month or so.
It seems that neither CAA nor any other authority has made any consideration towards the 30-40,000 customers who have paid monies to obtain these TV broadcasts & have been left on the lurch because of some petty accusations, maybe even business jealousies, etc that have taken precedence over the rights of the consumer.
It is sad to note that our country seems to think we are still in the dark ages of consorship. Preventing access to media & entertainment at a price should be encourages when unrestricted information/entertainment is freely available on the Internet to any Tom, Dick or Harry who has a PC & a Telephone connection to enter the World Wide Web.
For that matter no Sri Lankan government up to now have prevented or stopped or even attempted to control the most ruthless & meticulous terrorist organization in the world, Tigers from acquiring latest technology, whether it is satellite phones or transmission of radio & tv signals from their so called de-facto country confined to only vanni areas.
So who is fooling whom, I believe it is your responsiblility to go public with your interpretation of this issue & give us guidance how we can achieve retransmitting of this suspended services without any further delay. It would be to your utmost credit if you can achieve this before FIFA finals are held. I wouldn't be surprised if football is also part of the problem for authorities!
So it is now over to you to respond what CAA has done so far on this matter & what you would advise as we subscribers do in this hour of need. Of course we do understand that it is best to form consumer soceities, etc. But until we to come to that as I believe there is come winds being blown towards that direction especially as far as these cable tv customers are concerned.
But we will never know what will happen in the future & whether the authorities will want to ban these groups only time will tell.
Appreciate greatly if you would be kind enough to response to my email ASAP with whatever advice & hope you can give me.
Many Thanks,
Kind Regards,
Mohan Mendis
Guess it is now time for the CBN/LBN Customers follow the example from Mr. Mohan and write to the relevant people. Mr. Mohan is also forwarding email to all the newspapers in this country. This is being posted on this blog upon his request.
If anyone of you out there have sent letters or emails to any individual please post the sent email or letter under this post as a comment inclusive of your email address so that anyone can confirm the authencity of the email.
----Original Message-----From: Mohan Mendis [mailto:mohan@sengroup.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 05, 2006 12:25 PM
To: 'chairmancaa@hotmail.com.uk'
Cc: 'caa.office@sltnet.lk'
Subject: CBNSat Issue
Importance: HighDear Sir,
I had the opportunity to watch part of your live discussion of ITN last night & I thought it was best that I direct my problem to you (assuming that you had not touched on the issue last night) as I don't think I have seen any press reports on your intervention on this fiasco that has been enacted between the CID & Cable/Satellite TV service providers during the last month or so.
It seems that neither CAA nor any other authority has made any consideration towards the 30-40,000 customers who have paid monies to obtain these TV broadcasts & have been left on the lurch because of some petty accusations, maybe even business jealousies, etc that have taken precedence over the rights of the consumer.
It is sad to note that our country seems to think we are still in the dark ages of consorship. Preventing access to media & entertainment at a price should be encourages when unrestricted information/entertainment is freely available on the Internet to any Tom, Dick or Harry who has a PC & a Telephone connection to enter the World Wide Web.
For that matter no Sri Lankan government up to now have prevented or stopped or even attempted to control the most ruthless & meticulous terrorist organization in the world, Tigers from acquiring latest technology, whether it is satellite phones or transmission of radio & tv signals from their so called de-facto country confined to only vanni areas.
So who is fooling whom, I believe it is your responsiblility to go public with your interpretation of this issue & give us guidance how we can achieve retransmitting of this suspended services without any further delay. It would be to your utmost credit if you can achieve this before FIFA finals are held. I wouldn't be surprised if football is also part of the problem for authorities!
So it is now over to you to respond what CAA has done so far on this matter & what you would advise as we subscribers do in this hour of need. Of course we do understand that it is best to form consumer soceities, etc. But until we to come to that as I believe there is come winds being blown towards that direction especially as far as these cable tv customers are concerned.
But we will never know what will happen in the future & whether the authorities will want to ban these groups only time will tell.
Appreciate greatly if you would be kind enough to response to my email ASAP with whatever advice & hope you can give me.
Many Thanks,
Kind Regards,
Mohan Mendis
10 comments:
Our appreciation goes to Mohan for taking up the CBN matter with CAA. Believe this is the first time someone has taken any initiative to bring this matter to public. Although there were very good comments/suggestions on this blog, they were only limited to few of us who visit this blog regularly. Now it's our time to go all out to make our voice heard. Write to media, relevant auhorities and also circulate this injustice to public through email etc. I think as customer's we should flight to get back CBN/LBN as early as possible. Therefore it is mandatory that we make public aware and press authorities to change their stance by getting our message to the public.
We need to organise a mass email & SMS campaigne to selected group of autorities who are responsible for this mess, including the Media Minsiter. SMSs will be the most powerful means we can bombbard with on a particular day & time. We should have a common protest slogan & demand for immedite restoration of illegaly banned services. Imagine 30,000 SMSs its like a mass public demonstration ! Your ideas are welcome to take this forward so that we can act NOW.
Yes i agree with what Mr mohan said and can some body start the SMS and display it in this coloum ?
Perhaps we should also SMS the President!!
Certainly Agree with Mohan. Can somebody suggest text to be used (should be short but powerful enough to convey our message across). Also Mobile numbers ?
What about the mobile nos. of autorities (more nos. to be sent to, greater the effect), can any one suggest on the blog or email seperatly ??
Also waiting for someone to suggest a strong pharse / messege to be SMSd.
I think our only hope is president. If we can contact hime and tell our story, he might do something. I'm not too sure about government officials. I put a mail to TRC few days back and still they didn't reply.
Mohan did CAA reply to you. Futher I did mail to Lakbima newspaper editor to publish a letter that I wrote regading about CBN case. I hope they publish it on Sunday paper. Likbima is the first sinhala news paper put an article about CBN.
No reply upto now from CAA. But I sent copies of my email to CAA to editors of all English Dailies yestaerday.
sThis is the state of affairs at Sri Lanka's Consumer Affairs Authority. Copied News feed below is ample proof !
God save the consumer!
Friday, 7 July 2006 - 4:09 AM SL Time
There seems to be no end in sight to the dogfight at the Consumer Affairs Authority (CAA), which has apparently gone the same way as Parliament. It has come to be characterised by regular brawls and attendant acrimony. The Chairman and the Director General (DG), as we have reported a number of times, are going for each other`s jugular over almost anything. A CAA meeting last Monday, according to our report yesterday, was marred by a barrage of accusations the duo traded freely while other board members looked on. The on-going tussle has the trappings of a clash of egos'two big ones at that!
The DG is accused of preparing minutes without consulting the Chairman, who goes all out to shoot them down. The former is also said to have objected to a pay hike, which the latter granted himself. They, as our report says, don`t seem to see eye to eye on anything under the sun, let alone burning issues affecting the consumers.
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