{"id":55542,"date":"2016-06-14T04:57:37","date_gmt":"2016-06-14T11:57:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=55542"},"modified":"2016-06-14T04:57:37","modified_gmt":"2016-06-14T11:57:37","slug":"what-a-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/06\/14\/what-a-shame\/","title":{"rendered":"What a shame?"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>A Sri Lankan Citizen\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"article_date\">June 13, 2016, 7:43 pm<\/span><\/p>\n<p>As very correctly highlighted in the editorial of The Island of 9 June 2016, when thousands of people of Sri Lanka are desperate, because of the recent floods, landslides and explosions, and crying out for relief, it is a shame that the government has proposed to spend a Rs. 1,175 million for purchasing luxury cars for some MPs. The action taken by the Prime Minister to stop this expenditure is very much appreciated, but it is disturbing to find that some ministers are defending this proposal to spend so much money to import luxury vehicles saying they need these vehicles to serve the people?<\/p>\n<p>Members of the general public are collecting money to feed, clothe and shelter their fellow citizens in distress due to the recent floods, landslides and fire. A large number of foreigners are sending assistance to the people affected. The Maharagama Cancer Hospital is in urgent need of a scanner which costs around 20 million, and the public are collecting the necessary funds to purchase this equipment. Around 40,000 people and their families are affected by the Chronic Kidney Disease reported to occur in 10 districts of the country. A large number of those affected need to travel to hospitals for dialysis. But this facility is not available in most of the hospitals in the 10 districts. Those who need to go to hospitals for dialysis find it very difficult to travel by bus, and needs to be provided with transport. This is the reality; but, some ministers of the government are more interested to purchasing luxury cars spending billions of rupees. These ministers need to realize there is trade deficit of around Rs. 1200 billion, and the foreign exchange utilized to import these vehicles were earned by our people working mainly in the Middle East, toiling day and night.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A Sri Lankan Citizen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Sri Lankan Citizen\u00a0Courtesy The Island June 13, 2016, 7:43 pm As very correctly highlighted in the editorial of The Island of 9 June 2016, when thousands of people of Sri Lanka are desperate, because of the recent floods, landslides and explosions, and crying out for relief, it is a shame that the government has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}