According to the survey, the availability of officers proficient in Tamil in 44 of the offices which were surveyed located outside the Northern and Eastern Provinces, where the administrative language is Sinhala, is at a low level.

On the other hand the availability of officers proficient in Sinhala in offices in the Northern and Eastern provinces is also is at a low level .

In the provinces outside the North-East, there is an acute shortage of officers proficient in the Second language, where the percentage of officers proficient in Tamil is 9.5 percent compared with 18.1 percent of officers proficient in Sinhala in the North-East.

However OLC officials revealed that none of the offices targeted in this survey had the full cadre or the strength in their staff to cater to the needs for the implementation of the official language policy.(DN)