Open Letter to His Excellency the President: Restoring Academic Integrity at South Eastern University of Sri Lanka
Your Excellency,
I am writing this open letter to bring to your attention a dire situation at the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka (SEUSL) concerning academic integrity. Specifically, I am deeply concerned about significant lapses in academic standards involving certain individuals holding positions such as Vice Chancellor, deans, and professors.
Regrettably, there have been numerous reports of these academic malpractices in the media, including articles from the Daily Mirror, Sri Lanka Guardian, Lankadeepa, and Tamil Mirror. Despite these widespread allegations, it is disheartening to note the lack of proper investigation or action effectively taken by authorities.
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| The South Eastern University of Sri Lanka is a public university in Oluvil in Sri Lanka. Established in 1995 as a university college, it became a full-fledged university in 1996. However, the reputation of this higher education institute is systematically decaying due to various reasons [ Photo: South Eastern University of Sri Lanka] |
A recent article titled “Bogus VC’s Destructive Influence Perpetuates Havoc at South Eastern University of Sri Lanka”, published, by Sri Lanka Guardian on March 10, 2024, highlights serious concerns regarding professorship promotions and 22 academic appointments given by South Eastern University of Sri Lanka, currently being challenged at the Court of Appeal (http://www.srilankaguardian.org/2024/03/bogus-vcs-destructive-influence.html). This article provides substantial evidence of compromised academic integrity and other malpractices.
Upon further investigation following the publication of this article, additional evidence corroborating these claims has surfaced, further underscoring the systemic issues at SEUSL.
I will describe these evidences of poor academic integrity in a few clusters to describe the situation more clearly. These clusters of evidence will show how these academic malpractices are inherited by other generations or get metastasis. The following clustering is found very suitable to describe this phenomenon of academic corruption.
First generation SEUSL professors
Second generation SEUSL professors
SEUSL professors in the pipeline
New recruits for SEUSL teaching positions
Cluster One: First Generation SEUSL Professors
The March 10, 2024 Sri Lanka Guardian Article says that “Another South Eastern University professor from the Department of Management of the Faculty of Management and Commerce of SEUSL is known to have published a research article titled ‘Two Sides of the Same Coin: Harmful or Helpful? A Critical Review of the Consequences of Organizational Citizenship Behavior’ in year 2016 plagiarizing the intellectual effort put by one Dwayne Devonish of West Indies origin in composing his PhD thesis titled “A Longitudinal Examination of the Consequences of OCBs for Individuals in Organisations: the Moderating Roles of Perceived Organisational Support and Control”, submitted to the University of Nottingham, UK, in year 2014; currently Dr. Dwayne Devonish is a Professor at the University of the West Indies. This is the state of affairs with regard to some of the senior-most academic employees of SEUSL. If senior-most employees like chair professors are plagiarists then it is only reasonable to expect ‘louder voices’ and ‘standing orations’ calling for collective resolutions ‘for plagiarism’ than ‘against plagiarism’. This situation demonstrates that this institution of higher education needs a proper babysitting by higher authorities and a complete re-training with regard to academic rigor, discipline, professional ethics and even basic morality in general.”
Further investigation on these allegations revealed that this SEUSL chair professor, belonging to the Department of Management of the Faculty of Management and Commerce of SEUSL, has also been a contestant for the next vice chancellor post at SEUSL. She has been recommended by the Council of SEUSL in the third place from among the contestants for the next vice chancellor term. She, nearly being a founder academic at SEUSL, had been attaining various academic promotions throughout her career, all the way to becoming an SEUSL chair professor in Management. But the shocking evidences, which surfaced when investigating her publications, cast a huge doubt on her academic integrity. Academic integrity is also a reflection of the moral values and ethics of an academic. But, this SEUSL chair professor has been carefree to have constantly been publishing from materials and intellectual properties belonging to others merely by stealing them. For example, she has stolen from others’ published articles and dissertations to publish articles in her name. Her academic malpractices can be broadly summarized as
1. Fraudulence in publication(s) based on the purported research conducted for her MBA degree
2. Fraudulence in publication(s) based on purported MBA research supervised by her
3. Fraudulence in other publications for which points/ credits have been claimed for promotion to the professorship promotion(s)
I substantiate my foregoing claims below:
Evidence of academic fraudulence in a publication based on her postgraduate (MBA) thesis
“How Far the Knowledge Workers and Data Workers are Satisfied With the Organizational Reward Systems: An Empirical Study on Twelve Service Organizations in Sri Lanka” is an article published by this SEUSL chair professor of Management in year 2003 in the Journal of Management (Vol. 1, No. 1, October, 2003, pp.41-55), published by none other than SEUSL. This particular journal was published by South Eastern University of Sri Lanka and the same SEUSL professor was the editor of the journal while this article with plagiarism was being published. According to the author, as it appears in the journal, this article is “is based on a Research Paper submitted by the writer in partial fulfilment of the requirement of the MBA degree“[sic]. Based on the evidences available now, it is suggestive enough that plagiarism has been conducted in the name of or as part of this purported MBA research.
She is found to have composed the objectives, methodology, findings and conclusions of this purported research article by having significant amount textual similarities due to plagiarism from multiple sources, including textbooks she is supposed to teach from and research articles, a prominent one among them being a research article from the very previous year from an author affiliated to the same institution to which she had submitted her dissertation to! These findings suggest that her MBA dissertation, the apparent source of this purported research being published, requires an investigation. Her MBA degree was completed in year 2000 and interestingly this MBA degree has been used by her to promote herself to the post of SEUSL senior lecturer from being an SEUSL probationary lecturer. In the past Sri Lanka Guardian and Daily Mirror exposed a very identical instance of fraudulence in the case of an MPhil thesis written by Rameez Aboobacker to get confirmed in his job (without losing the job) and to become an SEUSL senior lecturer.
Based on the fact that this article appears on its very first issue of the very first volume, it is also shocking to derive that it did not take more than 40 pages (or possibly less) for the Journal of Management of SEUSL since its inception before it carried plagiarism – from its very first editor!
Evidence of academic fraudulence in SEUSL postgraduate research supervised by her
The same SEUSL professor has supervised research projects at various levels. From the available sources it was found that she has been the supervisor of the SEUSL MBA research conducted by now-topmost administrative officer of South Eastern University of Sri Lanka. The research has been published in the form of a journal article with the title “Organizational Justice as an Antecedent of Job Satisfaction of Administrative Staff in Sri Lankan State Universities” in the Journal of Management (Volume XI No.1 – October 2014) published by South Eastern University of Sri Lanka. This particular article carries evidence of word-to-word copying in the study context, methodology, conclusion and recommendations sections. It creates confusions as to whether the said SEUSL chair professor really supervised these works or whether she merely entertained fraudulent work in this particular research. Samples:
Evidence of stealing various other materials to publish her articles
Apart from the above mentioned prominent evidences, I am listing below a number of publications with significant occurrences of research fraudulence including plagiarism having been published by the same SEUSL chair professor. For the sake of brevity, I will only provide below a brief summary of the fraudulences; and if necessary, I will bring the detailed elaborations of these findings in future.
The role work family conflict self efficacy on the negative effect of organizational citizenship behavior; South East Asia Journal of Contemporary Business, Economics and Law 3 (1), 49-54; ISSN 2289-1560 2013
This article is composed from a thesis of Nigerian-origin and surprisingly the findings and conclusions from the SEUSL chair professor matches the same from the Nigerian academic! It is interesting to note that the 2014 PhD dissertation of this SEUSL academic was also on a topic around Organizational Citizenship Behavior!
Environmental Strategic Factor Analysis of the Tourism Industry in the South Coastel Part of Sri Lanka; Journal of Emerging Trends in Economics and Management Sciences (JETEMS) 5(5):426-434; Scholarlink Research Institute Journals, 2014 (ISSN: 2141-7024)
The literature survey, methodology and portions of the finding and conclusion have been stolen from different articles without giving proper credit to them. It is noted that the SEUSL chair professor effortlessly composes an article by combining pieces from different sources and throwing in some of her own flavor here and there.
Twenty First Century Human Resource Management Practices: Why Does Organizational Justice Matter? An Examination of Effect of Perception of Organizational Injustice on Work Alienation and Organizational Citizenship Behavior; International Journal of Engineering Research and Management (IJERM) ISSN: 2349- 2058, Volume-02, Issue-08, August 2015.
Portions of data analysis, results, discussion and conclusion have been stolen from other sources to compose this article.
A predictor become dysfunctional: an investigation of the effect of workload on the relationship between personality and OCB; International Journal of Business and Management Review; Vol.4, No.2, pp.120-132, March 2016.
Hypotheses in her published article, methodology, findings and portions of conclusions are composed from other sources.
Challenges of Thesis Work: Towards Minimizing the Non-Completion Rate in the Postgraduate Degree Program; European Journal of Business and Management www.iiste.org; ISSN 2222-1905 (Paper) ISSN 2222-2839 (Online); Vol.8, No.7, 2016
Portions of this publication are stolen from “Barriers to completion of the doctoral degree in educational administration” by Lawrence H. Myers, a dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in Educational Administration.
Extending the Nomological Network of the Organizational Citizenship Behavior: Moderating effect of Work Family Conflict Self Efficacy on the Relationship Between Organizational Citizenship Behavior and Work Family Conflict; Proceedings of the Third International Symposium, SEUSL: 6-7 July 2013, Oluvil, Sri Lanka
Findings and conclusions of this publication are contain content copied from a thesis of Nigerian-origin.
Two Sides of the Same Coin: Harmful or Helpful? A Critical Review Of The Consequences Of Organizational Citizenship Behavior; International Journal of Business and Management Review; Vol.4, No.2, pp.60-77, March 2016
As described earlier, parts of this article are stolen from, among many others, a PhD thesis titled “A Longitudinal Examination of the Consequences of OCBs for Individuals in Organisations: the Moderating Roles of Perceived Organisational Support and Control”, submitted to the University of Nottingham, UK, in year 2014.
Organizational Citizenship Behavior; Measurement and Validation in the Context of Sri Lankan Universities; The second international symposium May 25-27,2012, SEUSL
Discussion and conclusions of this paper is contain content stolen word-to-word from other sources.
Behind Emotion: Organizational Injustice Practices as a Key Antecedent of Counterproductive Work Behaviors; 5th International Symposium 2015 – IntSym 2015, SEUSL
Portions of methodology, conclusions and findings are composed by copying from other sources and are fraudulent in nature.
Citation-based ratings
Being publications with plagiarism and research fraudulence, the above publications face the risk of being retracted, had they been published in journals run by reputed publishers. However, most of the publishers that these SEUSL researchers work with are either predatory publishers or not-so quality-conscious publishers including SEUSL itself. Following are the numbers of citations these fraudulent publications have earned.
19 citations : The Role Work Family Conflict Self Efficacy on the Negative Effect of Organizational Citizenship Behavior
15 citations: Environmental Strategic Factor Analysis of the Tourism Industry in the South Coastal Part of Sri Lanka
10 citations: Twenty First Century Human Resource Management Practices: Why Does Organizational Justice Matter? An Examination of the Effect of Perception of Organizational Injustice on Work Alienation and Organizational Citizenship Behavior
23 citations: Challenges of Thesis Work: Towards Minimizing the Non-Completion Rate in the Postgraduate Degree Program
23 citations: Two Sides of the Same Coin: Harmful or Helpful? A Critical Review of The Consequences of Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Could the gains in citations and the promotion related benefits, if any, be the motivation for these authors for resorting to plagiarism than to work on their own and publish genuine effort? If any such benefits have been enjoyed by these authors, should they be reconsidered considering the retraction-worthiness of these fraudulent publications? A rough working on the Google Scholar profile of this author indicates that the h-index of this author would fall by a 33% if we remove only the above mentioned fraudulent articles from consideration due to research fraud.
This particular first generation SEUSL professor is a very good example indicative of the scale and scope of academic corruption at this institution, a phenomenon which was followed and enhanced by the generation of fraudulent SEUSL academics that Rameez Aboobacker (the current vice chancellor) belongs to. She has committed severe academic fraudulence including in the publication of her MBA research and in various other publications. She has used these publications for her academic promotions at various grades including in her promotion as a professor on merit basis and as a cadre professor. I kindly bring to your attention here serious concerns on her suitability to serve as a vice chancellor of an academic institution. We as a nation maintain a pride in the quality of our education system and academic mafias that emerge with such frauds can destroy its integrity. This can be evidenced by some of the following evidences which I’m producing below. All these evidences of academic fraudulence and corruption are from the same institution: South Eastern University of Sri Lanka.
Cluster Two: Second generation SEUSL professors
A rather longer list of SEUSL professors can be presented under this section and I would like to keep it brief by explaining the situation with just two of the famous cases. One is infamous Rameez Aboobacker, who should by now have become a national case study for plagiarism, with various types of academic fraudulences under his sleeve and the other one is an SEUSL professor without a PhD hailing from the Department of Management and Information Technology of the Faculty of Management and Commerce of SEUSL.
Rameez Aboobacker became an SEUSL professor in 2019 and he was appointed as the vice chancellor of SEUSL in 2021. Meanwhile, Rameez Aboobacker’s academic and administrative malpractices were questioned and discussed at various other platforms. His malpractices were discussed at the Parliament of the country and at the Presidential Secretariat. Following various developments regarding these malpractices at SEUSL, at a meeting presided by Your Excellency, a decision was taken to replace the Vice Chancellor Rameez Aboobacker of SEUSL by a Competent Authority in June 2023. University Grants Commission and the Ministry of Education, Sri Lanka handled the process leading to the appointment of a Competent Authority and the Gazette Notification for the appointment was about to be published. Soon Rameez Aboobacker filed a petition at the Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka against the Minister of Education, State Minister of Higher Education, Secretary to the Ministry, UGC and several other parties challenging the appointment of competent authority and obtained an interim order against the appointment of a Competent Authority (Source: Sri Lanka Guardian Article, March 2024).
I keep my presentation of the other prominent example case of the second generation SEUSL professors, brief simply by quoting the text published in the Sri Lanka Guardian article from March 2024: “One South Eastern University teacher from the Department of Management and Information Technology of the Faculty of Management and Commerce of SEUSL was promoted to the position of ‘Professor’ from his then-position of Grade II Senior Lecturer mainly based on what he claimed to be his research publications, as he did not (and still does not) hold a doctoral degree for an academic qualification. This individual reportedly has claimed to have more than 15 research articles published by him and indexed in reputed (or UGC-accepted) research indexes, all within just a one year duration, interestingly in just a few ‘research journals’ –more than one paper every month added to Scopus for a whole year with all of them accepted in an evaluation for professorship in a part of Sri Lanka: perhaps a record in Sri Lanka only to be broken by another South Eastern University professorship applicant described below, something for the surprise of even the elite Sri Lankan researchers enjoying some international research-celebrity status based on regular publication activities in Elsevier and elsewhere! It is interesting to notice that some of these journals sound like they are specialized for such serious abstract engineering sciences as ‘dynamical systems and control’ and or such computer hardware/ network implementation specific topics as ‘distributed and grid computing’ based on their titles while all the publications in them authored by this particular South Eastern University researcher are merely statistical correlation-finding exercises which aggregate questionnaires to basically summarize ‘the intention of a group of individuals’ in ‘performing some activity or in utilizing some piece of information technology’ or make some statement on ‘the impact of some new piece of information technology’ on ‘the state of affairs in some industrial or academic setting’. One of this author’s favorite journal has the title ‘journal of psychological rehabilitation’ and carries an article by this author with the title ‘Blockchain Technology Adoption by Chain Professionals’ – making us wonder who these breed of people now being identified by the phrase ‘chain professionals’ are and in what way Blockchain technology is now being associated with any psychological rehabilitation of any sorts, be it for the so-called chain-professionals or any kind of humans in general. Reportedly, this now-South Eastern University Professor then claimed as many as 20 articles from years 2020 and 2019 to have been indexed in Scopus, the research article indexing service run by the publisher Elsevier, so that he could claim scores for his much desired professorship, which would nearly double his salary drawn at SEUSL from public funds.
On the other hand, when we investigated with the Scopus indexing service, we found that there are only 9 indexed journal articles from year 2020 and 2 from year 2019 to have been indexed to the credit of this South Eastern University author! Besides this, to the interest of the many observers, it was noticeable that many of the journals that carried his articles got discounted from indexing by Scopus immediately following the year they were carrying his articles, i.e. since 2019 or 2020. The journal ‘Test Engineering and Management’ has been discontinued of coverage in Scopus in 2019, following it having suddenly increased its total article count in year 2019 by more than twice the total from the preceding ten years put together – this is typically the sign of a dying journal having been taken over by elements of international academic underworld entities – a common form of journal hijacking. The pattern is observable with many such journals that are discontinued in Scopus.
These academic underworld entities keep scanning for such dying journals and they are taken over for the purpose of exploiting and cash-in on the remaining coverage period from indexing services by mass-selling publication opportunity to desperate authors in need of indexed publications for promotions; once this activity is detected, indexing services would discontinue coverage and the predator continues its scan for the next genuine journal in the process of natural death. It is surprising to see the strong association, intensive article contributions and collusion from certain individuals to such suspicious journals in their last issues with any coverage of indexing services such as Scopus. Journal of Critical Reviews, another favorite journal of this South Eastern University author, published 132 articles in 2019 and inflated itself to publish 1784 articles in 2020 and eventually had its Scopus coverage discontinued. Another predatory journal by the title ‘Journal of Advanced Research in Dynamical and Control Systems’ got discontinued from Scopus coverage in year 2020.
Another predatory journal by the title ‘International Journal of Advanced Science and Technology’ got discontinued in year 2020 after it more than doubled its annual total article count within a year. International Journal of Psychosocial Rehabilitation had its subject areas listed as ‘Psychology: Clinical Psychology; Medicine: Psychiatry and Mental Health; Nursing: Psychiatric Mental Health’ when they introduced themselves to Scopus and got discontinued from coverage by Scopus in year 2020; this is the journal that carried the above mentioned article of this author relating the so-called ‘chain professionals’ and Blockchain technology.
How is it that these are the journals that these authors are most-associated with? What is the Black Market supply chain here like? How are these foreign journals paid for by these authors? Are there dealers and brokers and middle-men? We are now with the necessity to be down to this unholy level of scrutiny on university academic affairs to admit these to be thought-provoking questions. In the ORCID profile of this particular author, we find that he claims to have authored an article by the title “Supply chain professionals’ intention to use cloud supply chain” to have been published in a 2020 issue of the journal “Test Engineering and Management”.
We find in Scopus website that Scopus had discontinued coverage of the journal in year 2019! Moreover, this journal is a well-known case of ‘hijacked journals’. The journal which was previously known to have been a genuine ‘trade journal’ has been hijacked by some entities maintaining an illegitimate website with the URL ‘http://www.testmagzine.biz’ (notice the missing ‘a’ between letters g and z) – the original discontinued journal had a website with the now-non-functioning URL ‘http://www.testmagazine.biz/’; this information is available from Beall’s list hosted at ‘https://beallslist.net/hijacked-journals/’. Another article of this author with the title ‘Impact of consumer attitudes on online advertising: hotel industry in Sri Lanka’: to be found in his ResearchGate profile, another social-media-equivalent for academic and industrial research.
We find that this author has been a contributor to this article along with some others; his claim for the share of contribution by him would certainly have been known to the evaluators of his research publication if he had sought score for this article in his application for professorship. At the time of publication of this article, Scopus already had dropped coverage of this corrupt substandard journal – we do not see this article having been indexed by Scopus while some other articles of the same author from the same year in some other issues of the same journal are found to have been indexed in Scopus. Even the editorial board on the website of this ‘predatory journal’ named ‘Journal of Critical Reviews’ looks funny (see https://web.archive.org/web/20240224205302/https://www.jcreview.com/editorial.php)!”.
Cluster Three: SEUSL Professors in the pipeline
There are number of applications in the pipeline at South Eastern University of Sri Lanka, some of which are heads and deans of faculties, whose records as academics is tainted with significant levels of academic fraudulence. In most cases, this cluster is only different from the second generation SEUSL professors in that they are still earning a salary lower than that of professors, the difference being about two hundred thousand rupees per month, which translates to an increase in their purchasing capacity (online or offline) by about 8000 USD a year if they succeed with their professorship applications. I shall use another case of an already famous SEUSL academic from the Department of Information and Communication Technology of SEUSL to demonstrate the kind of fraudulence this generation is identified with. This person without a PhD, exhibits the same characteristics described above of the so called SEUSL professor at the Department of Management and Information Technology of the Faculty of Management and Commerce of SEUSL.
The same Sri Lanka Guardian article from March 2024 states of this SEUSL professorship-aspirant the following. “Another South Eastern University teacher from the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) department of the Faculty of Technology of SEUSL has applied for professorship in year 2020, during the reign of MMM Najim, again without a doctoral degree and therefore his application has to be sufficiently supported by his research publications. A complaint submitted to the office of Hon. President claims that this individual has reported in his professorship application to have published more than 25 articles as journal publications to have been indexed in Scopus within the same calendar year 2020. This ‘one paper every other week’ report breaks the record set by the previously described South Eastern University researcher. Quite interestingly though, the this South Eastern University researcher’s publication claim share some commonalities with those of the previously discussed South Eastern University researcher: they both have some common predatory journals which they seem to have contributed to or collaborated with. It is surprising to see that a similar pattern of publication process has been operating within this university system and a specified number of journals have given platform for these academics to publish within a very short period of time and to claim indexing metrics. But most of these journals are highlighted as hijacked journals or predatory journals of other sorts by ‘lists’ such as the Beall’s list and also they are usually seen to have been removed from indexing sources such as Scopus. Several research fraudulences including predatory publication, duplicate publication and false claims to index metrics are highlighted in the detailed complaint which has been sent to the Chairman of UGC and to Hon. President’s office.”
Cluster Four: New recruits
Plagiarism breeds plagiarism. Fraudulence breeds fraudulence. An SEUSL with fraudulent academics at its prominent posts will only attract and induct more frauds as it is the typical way of the self-serving fraudulent systems. Then it is reasonable to expect that there are going to be new recruits who are no exception to being frauds. There is a famous coauthor of the above mentioned professor in pipeline, also from the Department of Information and Communication Technology of SEUSL. The duo has co-authored the following papers in journals of fraudulent nature including those described above. Interestingly, this young co-author was recruited to the same department in year 2021 and the following publications have reportedly been considered for his recruitment. The above said academic in the pipeline for professorship has physically been present as a member in the selection panel which recruited his co-author with whom he published the following articles in fraudulent/ predatory journals.
Health Perspective Of Emergency Accident Evacuation System: A Cloud, Iot, And Mobile Based Conceptual Framework; European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine; Volume 07,Issue 03, 2020, ISSN 2515-8260
Cloud, IoT and Mobile Based Conceptual Framework on Accident Avoidance System; Solid State Technology 63(6):13306-13325
The Impact of Health Care Waste Procedures in Effectiveness of the Health Care Waste Management and Implementation of Software Prototype for Data Management: Special Reference to Kalmunai Medical Officer of Health (MOH) Division; European Journal of Molecular & Clinical Medicine; Volume 07,Issue 03, 2020
RFID based Smart Healthcare System: A Survey Analysis; December 2020; TEST ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT 83(Vol. 83: July/August 2020):4615-4621
Emerging Smart University using various Technologies: A Survey Analysis; December 2020; TEST ENGINEERING AND MANAGEMENT 83(Vol. 83: July/August 2020):17713-17723
There is another recruit who was recruited to the same Department of Information and Communication Technology of SEUSL in year 2021. This new recruit is also a former student of the above mentioned academic in the pipeline to become a professor. This new recruit had published an article in a predatory journal and reportedly claimed false indexing to be considered for recruitment and appointment:
Telecommunication Customer Categorization with Novel Data Mining Approach for Effective Communication & lncrease Profitability; IOSR Journal of Computer- Engineering; IOSR Journal of Computer Engineering (IOSR-JCE); e-ISSN: 2278-0661, ISSN: 2278-8727, Volume 21, Issue 5, Ser. I (Sep – Oct 2019), PP 55-66; DOI: 10.9790/0661-2105015566
The above IOSR journal is predatory and the claimed indexing is nowhere to be found.
For the recruitment of these two new recruits and other few, Rameez Aboobacker has chaired the selection panel at the capacity of Vice Chancellor and the above mentioned academic in the pipeline to become a professor has been a selection panel member. To evaluate a component of Rameez Aboobacker’s professorship application, the above described first generation SEUSL professor has been a panel member. A pattern thus emerges.
Appeal
Your Excellency,
I have tried to show how this cancer in the academic system within this institution has evolved over time and got metastasis or is being inherited. I would like to bring to your consideration the fact that this is a huge threat to the reputation and well-being of the national higher education system in Sri Lanka. It not only destroys the quality of the education, but it also wastes a huge sum of money on these corrupt SEUSL academics. It is then an immediate necessary requirement/ responsibility on the part of the authorities and Your Excellency to intervene in the governance and operation of this institution to effect measures to restore academic integrity.
The Universities Act, No. 16 of 1978 makes provisions to the relevant ministry of the following:
Where the Minister is satisfied that the situation prevailing in a Higher Educational Institution is likely to endanger national security or is detrimental or prejudicial to national policy, or is likely to dislocate the functioning of such Institution, he may direct the Commission to take all such steps as he may deem necessary to bring such situation under control.
(4) Where the Minister is satisfied that, due to any strike or lockout or any other cause, the work or administration of any Higher Educational Institution has been seriously dislocated and that the Authorities of such Higher Educational Institution have failed to restore normal conditions, the Minister may take all such measures as may be necessary to ensure the restoration of normal conditions in such Higher Educational Institution. Pending the restoration of normal conditions, the Minister may, by Order published in the Gazette, make all such provisions as he may deem necessary in respect of all or any of the following matters relating to such Higher Educational Institution:-
(a) the closure of such Higher Educational Institution;
(b) the appointment of any person by name or by office, to be a competent authority for the purpose of exercising, performing or discharging, in lieu of any officer, Authority or other body of such Higher Educational Institution, any power, duty or function under this Act or any appropriate Instrument, and
(c) any other matter connected with or relating to any of the matters aforesaid.
Before concluding, I would like to make a note that Rameez Aboobacker (the current VC and a well-known academic fraud) has reportedly given an interview to a Tamil media outlet on the IMF process and the current economic concerns in Sri Lanka. The same Rameez Aboobacker wrote a media article to praise former President Gotabaya Rajapaksha’s decision to ban inorganic fertilizer while the appointment of the vice chancellor post was pending at the President’s Office in 2021 and this time also the appointment of the same vice chancellor post is pending at the Office of Your Excellency while Rameez Aboobacker has got an interview published regarding IMF process and economical concerns in the country. Errors in it indicative of his ignorance, incompetence and irrelevance aside, as much as was observed in his published ignorance when he proposed free medicine to Sri Lanka in year 2015 and when he published his academic and medical ignorance on the difference between Chronic Kidney Disease of Unknown Etiology (CKDu) and the generic Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), these well-timed media releases seemingly attempting to appease the political leadership do not fail to be well noticed as a recurrent pattern by the community that closely follows the downfall of academic integrity and other developments at SEUSL.
Thank You.
Concerned Citizen
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