{"id":65247,"date":"2017-04-16T15:20:01","date_gmt":"2017-04-16T22:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=65247"},"modified":"2017-04-16T15:20:01","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T22:20:01","slug":"meethotamulla-garbage-disaster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/04\/16\/meethotamulla-garbage-disaster\/","title":{"rendered":"Meethotamulla Garbage Disaster"},"content":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 Canada<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n

Easter Sunday, 2017<\/p>\n

Hon. Dr. Harsha de Silva
\nDeputy Minister of Foreign Affairs
\nMinistry of Foreign Affairs
\nColombo
\nSri Lanka.<\/p>\n

Dear Dr. Harsha de Silva:<\/p>\n

Just read your announcement, Deputy Minister Harsha de Silva says that the Government will bear all funeral expenses of those who lost their lives.\u201d \u00a0<\/em><\/strong>This was about the deaths from the collapse of the garbage dump at Meethotamulla.<\/p>\n

Woopeedoo!\u201d <\/em><\/strong>What compensation for the callous sordid politics for nearly two decades, while you politicians couldn’t care two barrels of jardi, but interested in trying to figure out how to fatten your wallets by selling special permitted BMWs, Mercedez cars that you all were entitled to.\u00a0 Sordid in deed.<\/p>\n

No doubt the Yahapalanaya Government will blame the Mahinda Rajapaksa Government for not doing something about it and arrest the MPs who were responsible to have the Garbage dump removed and put them behind bars.\u00a0 Right Deputy Minister? That\u2019s routine Yahapalana politics, isn\u2019t it.\u00a0 Not good.\u00a0 Sordid, indeed.\u00a0 The Yahapalanayos cannot sanitize your hands that easily, as you all lacked the political commonsense and wisdom to see the eminent danger ahead of you all.<\/p>\n

If just one of your Yahapalanayos had the wisdom and conviction to do something quickly the repeat of the South Wales Aberfan colliery disaster wouldn\u2019t have occurred at Meethotamulla.<\/p>\n

I was a student at the University in Swansea in Wales in October 1966 and one of the students who clawed at the rubble from the University rescue team.\u00a0 That incident has haunted me ever since for 50 years.\u00a0 I talk of it in my long poem in the chapbook \u2018Once Upon a Time\u2026.I returned.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026 That on the Friday morning
\n<\/em><\/strong>of 21 October 1966
\n<\/em><\/strong>the colliery Tip No.7 at Aberfan
\n<\/em><\/strong>broke away as a rain-soaked slurry
\n<\/em><\/strong>and slithered like drunken pythons
\n<\/em><\/strong>downhill speeding in a hurry
\n<\/em><\/strong>burying the village primary school
\n<\/em><\/strong>with 116 children and 28 adults,
\n<\/em><\/strong>a shock which still lingers on in me
\n<\/em><\/strong>like Welsh Grandma Harriet’s
\n<\/em><\/strong>attic nightmare.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

The disaster at Meethotamulla is no different and will pain its people for decades.\u00a0 And no doubt will say POX on every member of the Yahapalanayos, under their breaths for generations.\u00a0 And I wouldn’t blame them one bit for your callousness.<\/p>\n

I say shame on you lot as this unfortunate incident should never have happened.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Asoka Weerasinghe (Mr.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asoka Weerasinghe Kings Grove Crescent . Gloucester . Ontario . K1J 6G1 Canada Easter Sunday, 2017 Hon. Dr. Harsha de Silva Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ministry of Foreign Affairs Colombo Sri Lanka. Dear Dr. Harsha de Silva: Just read your announcement, Deputy Minister Harsha de Silva says that the Government will bear all funeral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asoka-weerasinghe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65247","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=65247"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65247\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}