History
The Ceylon Army Pioneer Corps was raised on 5 July 1959 with a large strength of 14,000 men. The unit is part of the Volunteer Force and was based on the Royal Pioneer Corps. Lt Col M.W.F. Abayakoon of the Cadet Corps was appointed its Commanding Officer. The main reason to raise this unit with a large strength was the frequent breakdown of essential services at that time due to workers unrest, strikes etc. Members of the corps used to handled harbour duties and driving of public transport. The Pioneer Corps was able to bring back normalcy in the harbour and other establishments, and the country was saved from starvation as foreign ships were threatening to bypass the Colombo harbor due to delays in unloading as a result of constant trade union action. When the workers’ unrest in the city was settled, in 1962 the Pioneers were employed in the Kantale Sugar Corporation to perform duties when the workers their went on strike.
In 1964 the pioneers assisted the field engineers of the Sri Lanka Engineers in constructing the Dambulla – Galewela Road and Katunayake Airport Road.
Since 1971 the Pioneers have also been employed in internal security duties all over the Island.
Read more about this topic: Sri Lanka Army Pioneer Corps
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)