Traffic congestion in Colombo costs one billion rupees a day
Posted on March 26th, 2019

Dr Sarath Obeysekera

Traffic congestion, in the Colombo city, cost around one billion rupees a day, Megapolis and Western Development Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka told Parliament, yesterday.Participating in third reading of the budget debate under the expenditure heads of the Ministries of Transport and Civil Aviation and Ports and Shipping, the Minister said that the loss incurred due to the traffic congestion in terms of waste of fuel and time had been estimated by the Moratuwa University to be around Rs. 1,000 million a day.

I predicted this in 2017 !

We should not prohibit Demonstrations but charge for the national losses 
Posted on March 2nd, 2017  in Lanka Web  by Dr Sarath Obeysekera

Yesterday I was passing by the road way in front of President’s office and noted some union members of Tamil community holding demonstrations. By 12 noon I was going back and police was trying control another group of people holding placards protesting about something else . Doctors and some medical staff were demonstrating in front Gampaha railway station inconveniencing the public.

We see that it is daily occurrence in our life

We also heard that under the principles of Yahaplanaya ,government is planning to allocate certain designated areas for Demo’s  in order to minimize the inconvenience to the public .We all know that there is massive loss to the country because of loss of man hours of  working people and over consumption of fuel due to traffic jams caused  by road blocks .

There is a solution to avoid or minimize the losses if we carry out following

Government should do a simple calculation of 500-1000 vehicles which burn fuel ( i,e 10 liters per vehicle for 2 hours costing 1500 Rs per vehicle and for 1000 vehicles cost will be Rs 1,500,000 )  .Loss of productive man-hours  ( i.e  3000 people at Rs 200 per manhour costing Rs 400×3000 = Rs  1,200.000 )

Total loss  is minimum  Rs 2,700,000 /= without considering the cost of police force and water used for  cannons !) .You may add another 2,300,000 Rs for maintaining law order including filing action against violators of public peace)

Total cost of one single demonstration for two hours will be 5 million Rs and if one carry on demo for 10 hours in will cost 50 million Rs to the country.

My golden suggestion is not to allow registered unions or political parties to hold demos other than in designated areas and impose a charge of 5 million Rs for two hours –say in Lipton Circle or  Lotus roundabout .

This amount should be paid to National Development Fund.

Total contribution to the national development  fund for a month will exceed  one billion Rupees.  (unions and parties can hold demo’s free during weekends !).

Unions may have to increase membership fees for members including party members to cover the payment charges for holding demo’s !!

I am sure this action by the government will be praised by IMF and World Bank .ADB ,OECF .JAICA etc rather than increasing taxes and price of essential goods .

Dr Sarath Obeysekera

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One Response to “Traffic congestion in Colombo costs one billion rupees a day”

  1. A Concerned Citizen Says:

    In my piece I posted on Lankaweb (Proposal to Restore Paradise) I noted that we should clearly demarcate areas for peaceful demonstration/strikes that do not interfere with the day to day running and life of everyone else. E.g. a Speaker’s Corner etc.
    So much money is lost in this country owing to mismanagement and corruption.

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