{"id":59475,"date":"2016-10-07T12:18:50","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T19:18:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=59475"},"modified":"2016-10-07T12:19:12","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T19:19:12","slug":"slaf-makes-a-killing-flying-politicians-peace-time-operations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/10\/07\/slaf-makes-a-killing-flying-politicians-peace-time-operations\/","title":{"rendered":"SLAF makes a killing flying politicians  Peace-time operations"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><span class=\"article_date\">By Saman Indrajith\u00a0Courtesy The Island<\/span><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span class=\"article_date\">October 6, 2016, 10:11 pm<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Parliament was informed yesterday that the Prime Minister\u2019s office had hired helicopters and other aircraft from January 10, 2015 to April 30 2016 at a cost of Rs. 123 million.<\/p>\n<p>This was revealed by a statement tabled by the state Minister of Defence Ruwan Wijewardene in answer to a question raised by Joint Opposition MP Udaya Gammanpila.<\/p>\n<p>The answer further revealed that the Prime Minister\u2019s office had hired helicopters 35 times, during the aforementioned period, at a cost of Rs 123 million, which was paid to the Air Force by the Prime Minister\u2019s office.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the Secretary to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, too, had hired helicopters 16 times at a cost of Rs 12.9 million while Minister of Industry and Commerce Rishad Bathiudeen had hired helicopters 13 times for a fee of Rs 6.1 million.<\/p>\n<p>Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa had hired helicopters 11 times paying Rs 5.2 million, while former President Chandrika Kumaranatunga had hired a helicopter once.<\/p>\n<p>Ministers Vajira Abeywardana, Sagala Ratnayake and MP Wijeyakala Maheswarana had each hired helicopters once.<\/p>\n<p>In total helicopters were hired 169 times by the state, private institutions, politicians and individuals during the specified period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Saman Indrajith\u00a0Courtesy The Island October 6, 2016, 10:11 pm Parliament was informed yesterday that the Prime Minister\u2019s office had hired helicopters and other aircraft from January 10, 2015 to April 30 2016 at a cost of Rs. 123 million. This was revealed by a statement tabled by the state Minister of Defence Ruwan Wijewardene [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-106"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59475","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=59475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}