History:
Mr.GG Ponnamblam said “When I am at Home in Jaffna I have no time for my self but do various favorers to villages and Jaffna people who walking to my home in jaffna in hundreds asking how and will I be attained their matters in Colombo. I said to avoid this hassle blame sinhala officers saying they are not in favorers to help you. Most of the time I saying them they don’t like Tamil Communities?”

Sri Lanka has following
Tamil speaking Hindus ,Christians and Muslims,

Sinhala speaking Buddhist, Christians and Muslims

English speaking Christians

 All above has equal (with out any discrimination) rights to attend formal education free and far in the government educational institution, up to the Degree level.
 All above has equal (with out any discrimination) right to free health care
 All above has equal rights to be a customer of state banking corporation under one interest rates and facilities.
 All above has build Universities and open universities including northern and eastern provinces, with branches I Vavniya , and Ampara.
 All above blind to so called powerful heartless minority for their destiny.
 All above deaf to so called powerful minority for their fate.

All above hasn’t right to live in northern part of Sri Lanka other than Tamil speaking Hindus and Christians after 1990 evacuation of Muslims from their home land.

All above hasn’t able to work in an equal way in the government organization in the northern and eastern provincial other than more Tamil speaking Hindus and Christians.

All above hasn’t developed a communication between the communities other than power hunger leaders of respective ethnics.

All above hasn’t appreciate the what they had but asking for a more beyond the needs.

All above hasn’t understood depth of the country, her values, richness of soul and soil and wealth of heritage.

All above hasn’t thought How did 83 riots broke. At the end it went on whose favour? How come some of 250 thousand people from Jaffna peninsula who not been effected migrate Canada to Ontario province?

Who is behind these 83 riots? If not 83 riots LTTE wouldn’t have able to find finance so well.
Organizer studied the Main Party Sinhala people weakness, and made use of them for the destruction. Well organized went on systematical way around the country. No riots will spread that well with out a leadership.

First and foremost thank you for your interest in the PCI survey. As a member of staff of the CPA, let me try to answer your queries in relation to the PCI sampling and the way it was presented.

The objective of the PCI survey is to measure the public opinion in relation to the country’s ethnic conflict and related political developments. A sample of 1600 was determined as it was sufficient and efficient to produce robust national estimators within the 3% error margin. As mentioned under the Scope & Methodology of the PCI, the sample was not exclusively distributed across the ethnic groups. Instead, the total sample was stratified by districts according to the population proportions while keeping the minimum allocation for all 4 ethnic groups.

As the PCI is primarily an ethnic sensitive survey, the sample design ensured that there will be adequate coverage of each main ethnic group in the study in order to draw an ethnic analysis. In this regard as in any other international survey research, the PCI also over-samples certain communities based on ethnicity and geography. However, the data is weighted before any analysis in order to make sure that the survey reflects the actual ethnic and geographical compositions of the surveyed population (in this case, the survey areas mentioned in the report).

I do agree with you that there are multiple ways of ‘skinning a cat’. Nevertheless, as the report needs to be concise and widely consumable irrespective of the reader’s competency on survey research, the findings have to be presented by the most influential variable, in this case, the Ethnicity. However, as in the past, Social Indicator, the survey research unit of the CPA always welcomes any further analysis requirements.

In the meantime, I think it is my duty to explain to you why the national level results (the results of the total sample) were not presented along with the ethnic results. As mentioned in the report, on one hand, the survey does not capture the opinion of the entire country and on the other hand, due to the security concerns, the Tamil community has only been surveyed using non-random sample techniques. Therefore, it is technically incorrect to analyse data that has been collected through 2 different sampling techniques and to generalize the findings to the entire country using the data that has been collected only from certain areas. (I think this would also clarify the confusion you had regarding the disclaimer)

Finally with regard to your last point on whether the ethnic breakdown of the survey reflects the current census spilt, the answer is a definite No. As I explained before, the Tamil samples were selected entirely out of the main sampling methodology (technically it is called Booster Sampling). Therefore, the representation of the Tamil community in the survey does not match the actual census Tamil population (hence the survey does not intend to generalise its results to the entire Tamil community and nor does it attempt to make national estimators). As far as the other 3 communities are concerned, the weighted sample sizes should be equal to those ethnic proportions within the surveyed area (Please refer the Sampling Methodology in the annex of the PCI report for a detailed explanation).

If you have any further queries please feel free to revert to the contacts given in the report.

anyway, my main question to the CPA staff is this. why have you have carried out a survey of 1600 random people and then spilt them on race, muslims, tamils, up country tamils and sinhalese.

and then you have released the findings sloely based on race?. why is this , why dont give statistics from the total 1600 people on your survey.

like they say, there are many ways to skin a cat, as well as present statistics .

whats meant by “*The Tamil community was surveyed using a non-random sampling technique. Therefore, all findings that reference
the Tamil people cannot be generalized to the entire community.”?????

according to your stats upcountry tamils are 16%, muslims 10% and tamils 05%. Is this our current census split of our ethnic Breakdown????