This refers to Dr. Janaka Ratnasiri’s letter that appeared in your paper of May 1.

His reasoning by which he concludes that the Surveyor General should instruct all Licensed Surveyors to give extents of lands only in the metric system (Hectares) and not in the British system (Acres, Roods, Perches) as sometimes done now is most confusing.

After skimming through the various aspects of the two systems and dealing with the roots of words like litre, kilometre etc; he arrives at hectare and dwells on it for a while. It is here that he makes some far-reaching suggestions that can directly affect practising licensed surveyors; in fact he pointedly mentions them.

The problems, as he sees them, and his proposed solutions can be summarised thus.

The hectare being a large unit of measure, (equal to 2.471 acres) an extent of 10 perches will be 0.0253 hectares (Ha) ‘and is not a convenient eye-catching figure to be included in land sale advertisements’. So he suggests a smaller unit of 100 square metres called ‘are’ derived from the hind part of hectare; the fore part ‘hecto’ representing the missing factor 100. (This etymology, JR explains at length; hence this citing). For all his aversions to decimals, he doesn’t however, say how to deal with, say, 1.5 perches (0.003794 Ha) – not uncommon an extent in any built up commercial area.

JR next suggests that the ‘are’ or the Sinhala ‘aara’ (which he finds ‘easy on the tongue’!) should be included by amend of the Act or gazetted regulations. This is a far reaching suggestion and highly complicated.

International units like metres, hectares, acres and feet, even hours and minutes are scientifically determined and universally adopted and used. Countries are bound to use these conventional units whether they are ‘eye catching’ and ‘easy on the tongue’ or not; otherwise they will be left stranded.

If any amendment is desire, the ordinary farmer should be considered. As any surveyor or notary would know he is most comfortable with lahas, kurnis, pela and the like; perches and hectares are really Greek to him though he may sign on deeds and other documents. So, if you give land extents both in metric and British units in plans it will not affect either way.

He will continue to puzzle out his eternal problem: why 0.25 (read as point twenty five) is less than 0.4 (read as point four).

Property developers, on the other hand, are an educated lot with qualified staff in this field and should be able to enlighten any prospective customer readily. So it is best that both units are allowed to stand; they are not contradictory of each other.

Creating new units to face isolated problems is certainly no solution.

If, say, the distance to the sun in light years is an eye sore when written in decimals, the solution is to state it in light seconds or minutes. You don’t try to change the speed of light to overcome this so called problem.