{"id":86768,"date":"2019-03-26T17:13:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T00:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=86768"},"modified":"2019-03-26T17:13:53","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T00:13:53","slug":"traffic-congestion-in-colombo-costs-one-billion-rupees-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/03\/26\/traffic-congestion-in-colombo-costs-one-billion-rupees-a-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Traffic congestion in Colombo costs one billion rupees a day"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Dr Sarath Obeysekera<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Traffic congestion, in the Colombo city, cost around one\nbillion rupees a day, Megapolis and Western Development Minister Patali\nChampika Ranawaka told Parliament, yesterday.Participating in third reading of\nthe budget debate under the expenditure heads of the Ministries of Transport\nand Civil Aviation and Ports and Shipping, the Minister said that the loss\nincurred due to the traffic congestion in terms of waste of fuel and time had\nbeen estimated by the Moratuwa University to be around Rs. 1,000 million a day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I predicted this in 2017 !<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-lankaweb-com\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"wp-embedded-content\" data-secret=\"XUeGIBQGVE\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/03\/02\/we-should-not-prohibit-demonstrations-but-charge-for-the-national-losses\/\">We should not prohibit Demonstrations but charge for the national losses\u00a0<\/a><\/blockquote><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" style=\"position: absolute; visibility: hidden;\" title=\"&#8220;We should not prohibit Demonstrations but charge for the national losses\u00a0&#8221; &#8212; LankaWeb.com\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2017\/03\/02\/we-should-not-prohibit-demonstrations-but-charge-for-the-national-losses\/embed\/#?secret=Aw4Brl2Iar#?secret=XUeGIBQGVE\" data-secret=\"XUeGIBQGVE\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>We should not\nprohibit Demonstrations but charge for the national losses&nbsp;<br>\nPosted on March 2nd, 2017&nbsp; in Lanka Web&nbsp;\nby <em>Dr Sarath Obeysekera<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Yesterday I was passing by the road way in front of President\u2019s\noffice and noted some union members of Tamil community&nbsp;holding\ndemonstrations. By 12 noon I was going back and police was trying control\nanother group of people holding placards protesting about something else .\nDoctors and some medical staff were demonstrating in front Gampaha railway\nstation inconveniencing the public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We see\nthat it is daily occurrence in our life<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We also&nbsp;heard\nthat&nbsp;under the principles of Yahaplanaya ,government is planning to\nallocate certain designated areas for Demo\u2019s&nbsp; in order to minimize the\ninconvenience to the public .We all know that there is massive loss to the\ncountry because of loss of man hours of &nbsp;working people and over\nconsumption of fuel due to traffic jams caused&nbsp; by road blocks .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is\na solution to avoid or minimize the losses if we carry out following<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Government\nshould do a simple calculation of 500-1000 vehicles which burn fuel ( i,e 10 liters\nper vehicle for 2 hours costing 1500 Rs per vehicle and for 1000 vehicles cost\nwill be Rs 1,500,000 ) &nbsp;.Loss of productive man-hours&nbsp; ( i.e\n&nbsp;3000 people at Rs 200 per manhour costing Rs 400\u00d73000 = Rs\n&nbsp;1,200.000 )<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Total\nloss&nbsp; is minimum&nbsp; Rs 2,700,000 \/= without considering the cost of\npolice force and water used for &nbsp;cannons !) .You may add&nbsp;another\n2,300,000 Rs for maintaining law order including filing action against\nviolators of public peace)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Total\ncost of one single demonstration for two hours will be 5 million Rs and if one\ncarry on demo for 10 hours in will cost 50 million Rs to the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My golden\nsuggestion is not to allow registered unions or political parties to hold demos\nother than in designated areas and impose a charge of 5 million Rs for two\nhours \u2013say in Lipton Circle or&nbsp; Lotus roundabout .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This amount\nshould be paid to National Development Fund. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Total\ncontribution to the national&nbsp;development &nbsp;fund for a month will\nexceed &nbsp;one billion Rupees. &nbsp;(unions and parties can hold demo\u2019s free\nduring weekends !).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Unions\nmay have to increase membership fees for members including party members to\ncover the payment charges for holding demo\u2019s !!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am sure\nthis action by the government will be praised by IMF and World Bank .ADB ,OECF\n.JAICA etc rather than increasing taxes and price of essential goods .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr Sarath\nObeysekera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[148],"class_list":["post-86768","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-sarath-obeysekera","tag-traffic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86768","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=86768"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86768\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86768"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86768"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86768"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}