The 102nd birth anniversary of Saumyamoorthi Thondaman was marked yesterday by events held in Colombo and Kotagala.

The Ceylon Workers' Congress Secretary General Arumugam Thondaman and CWC Chairman Muthu Sivalingam offered garlands to the S. Thondaman statue near Presidential Secretariat in Colombo.

Meanwhile, a memorial event was held at the CWC headquarters in Kotagala.

Born on August 30, 1913, in South India, Thondaman migrted to Sri Lanka, then called Ceylon, when he was at a young age. In 1939, he founded the Ceylon Indian Congress, which later evolved into the Ceylon Workers' Congress. Thondaman was a Cabinet Minister from 1978 until his demise in 1999.