Is this the response with ‘corporate responsibility,’ to our appeal to Dr. Hans Wijesuriya, CEO, Dialog?

(June 24, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) On the 25th December 2008, we submitted an appeal in writing to Dr. Hans Wijesuriya, CEO, of then Dialog Telekomon our concern that Dialog Telekom had started constructing a mobile phone transmission antenna at 94/3 Elie House Road, Mutuwal, Modera, Colombo 15 in the midst of our houses in this dense residential area.

We expressed our concerns with regard to the possible impact of this intrusion on our lives and those of our loved ones – our children, the elderly and the sick, our neighbours and the environment, which we believe cannot be simply allayed by the standard statement that there is no conclusive evidence to prove that the antenna would cause any significant hazard to our health or environment.

We referred Dr. Hans Wijesuriya to The Report of the Bio-initiative Working Group, August 2007, that pithily summed up the situation when it states that “often the industry view of allowable risk and proof of harm is most influential, rather than what public health experts would determine is acceptable” (ibid:5) . (For the full report, pl. see http://www.bioinitiative.org/report/docs/section_1.pdf )

We requested Dr. Wijesuriya to exercise his good sense as a citizen willing to act responsibly, towards the concerns of the community and, for the corporate responsibility, by stopping the construction in the midst of our neighbourhood.

For one and half years to this date, none of us who signed the petition got a response from either Dr. Wijesuriya or his representatives and what we gathered was that the above site constructed by Dialog right in the middle of our neighborhood was not commissioned. Therefore we let the matter lie.

However, it seems that after about one and half years of silence on our appeal to Dr. Wijesuriya, Dialog company has decided to respond to us. The Dialog company, yesterday, that is on 21st of June 2010, commissioned the cell phone tower in our neighborhood thus starting the transmission of potentially cancer causing radiation in our neighborhood.

This is the same company that claims to protect children in cyberspace and gifted the ‘Nenasa‘ programme, state-of-the-art Digital Satellite Television based Distance Education Bridge, to the Ministry of Education and Sri Lanka’s student population.

But Dialog has not been not willing to listen to our appeal to not to erect a cell phone tower that radiates potentiality cancer causing emissions affecting the children in our neighborhood, not to talk about the elders and sick who are the most immediately vulnerable to such radiation.

Dialog, is this your corporate responsibility?

Elie House Road neighbours