Dr. Sarath Obeysekera

Government advertisements in newspapers are usually boring but not this one. An advertisement on Friday by the Provincial Road Development Authority in the Western Province called for public bids for a peculiar assignment – pulling out an excavator that is stuck in the mud!The bids will be opened on February 23, with the excavator continuing to be stuck in the mud till then for a job that would have taken a few hours with the right equipment or is it such a complicated exercise?

The authority says the Sunny-135 excavator belonging to the authority is mired in mud in the canal around 1 km away from the Jaela Bund road bordering the Muthurajawela marshy lands”. It was seeking bids from individuals and institutions with the capacity and the facilities to pull out the said machine. As per state rules, bid documents were available at Rs. 500 each.

Yahaplanaya in full swing !

Officers are scared to take any decision .Last year one of the new dredgers called Sayura got partially  grounded in Hakkaduwa and Fishery Harbour Corporation had to call tenders to salvage before it gets fully grounded  due to adverse weather conditions

.By the time tenders were opened and a shipyard was selected Dredget was full grounded on a rock .

It cost double the amount to salvage !!!!