Sri Lanka’s drug addict rehabilitation programmes are being carried out in snail pace without giving it a priority, despite President Maithripala Sirisena’s action to intensify the combating of drug menace.
President Sirisena is now all-out to eradicate the drug menace from the country threatening drug king pins and narcotics mafia but no action has been taken to revitalize the rehabilitation of drug addicts from its current sorry state, civil society activists said.
A survey by the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board has revealed that 30,000 drug addicts have to be rehabilitated with immediate effect.
The survey revealed that there are about 80,000 drug addicts in the country of which the majority of them are from the Western province.
Colombo and Gampaha districts have a higher number of drug addicts than Kalutara.
The majority of these drug addicts are residents of the North-Western province and along the coastal belt of the island, Survey data showed.
A proposal to set up non-residential rehabilitation centres is still to be implanted although the President is keen to hang drug traffickers and conduct raids to size narcotics and combat drug dealers following the Philippines example.
It has been revealed that the National Dangerous Drugs Control Board had conducted 06 camps for the rehabilitation of drug addicts recently without proper medical guidance.
The Board has obtained the service of a Medical Officer who had not fully registered or temporally registered in the Medical Council for 03 camps.
Analysis of samples of biological specimen for performance enhancing drugs in sports, providing scientific service for judicial proceedings and providing technical service for the Sri Lanka Customs had not been carried out in the year 2017, Auditor Generals report revealed.
Out of these activities, only one activity had been carried out in the year 2016. The analysis carried out to test whether new adulterants are contained in heroin available on the “Street”, was less than 50 per cent, audit report observed.
Education programmes provided by the Drugs and Crimes Prevention Office, preparation of field test kits for the law enforcing institutions in order to identify narcotics and psychotropic substances had been in a very weak level , the report exposed.
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