The media have regularly spotlighted the grave and dangerously growing channals through  which wealthy western countries are continuing to plunder the resources of Third World countries like Sri Lanka in what is seen as modern or high-tech economic neocolonialism. In earlier eras the West did this through its military might but now it is being done in a more subtle and sophisticated way through huge transnational corporations (TNCs). The difference is that earlier third world countries were aware of what was happening when the Western powers came with their armies and battle tanks to plunder our wealth and resources. Now most people don’t know what is happening while we are being stripped of our wealth and resources. When the ordinary people get to know what has happened, it may be too late to realise that our political leaders and top officials have colluded or conspired with the TNCs in robbing the sovereign people of their resources.

In recent months the Daily Mirror has played a leading role in exposing at least three cases of multimillion dollar TNC robberies which they regularly colour-wash in deceptive terms. We exposed the proposed Seed Act through which TNCs would have taken control of agriculture which has been part of Sri Lanka’s culture and civilisation for thousands of years. Through this Seed Act our farmers would have been forced to become slaves of the TNCs and buy only their genetically modified seeds which are part of the deadly process of terminator technology. That means these seeds do not germinate and for every cultivation the farmers would have been forced to buy new stocks of seeds from the TNCs, gradually forcing the once proud and productive farmers to become slaves or paupers.  

We also exposed the manner in which transnational pharmaceutical giants recently tried to smuggle through a bill to regulate the import and sale of medicinal drugs and devices. This bill was projected as a long-delayed promise to implement Professor Senaka Bibile’s Essential Medicines Concept through which people would have access to quality drugs and healthcare at affordable prices. But people-friendly pharmacologists and health action groups including the People’s Movement for the Rights of Patients (PMRP) exposed how the proposed bill would have enabled pharmaceutical TNCs to gain more control of the health sector. The Daily Mirror last week also spotlighted how one TNC giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) was fined for large-scale corruption in the United States and China while allegations that the company was bribing doctors and health officials were being probed in Britain and several other countries including the war-ravaged Syria where millions of innocent people including children and mothers are going through horrible agony.

Last week, the DCD scandal in imported powdered milk erupted again. At a news conference held last week it was revealed that the Industrial Technology Institute (ITI) had detected DCD in samples of ice-cream that had been given at Poson dansal last month.

We commend the Government Nursing Officers’ Association (GNOA) for speaking out strongly last Friday and demanding a full probe by the Health Ministry on how some 30,000 tons of imported milk powder - ordered to be destroyed because of DCD contamination – had found its way to ice-cream makers and then to dansal.
We join the Ministry of Technology and Research and the GNOA in seeking tough action by the Health Ministry amid reports that one top Ministry official is now an advisor to a big powdered milk TNC.

We have often been told of the virtues of a mother, that the hands which rock the cradle will one day rule the world. But it now seems that the baby has been thrown out with the transnational bath water and these TNCs are trying to rule the world from the cradle to the grave.