{"id":93031,"date":"2019-09-15T15:07:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-15T22:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=93031"},"modified":"2019-09-15T15:09:26","modified_gmt":"2019-09-15T22:09:26","slug":"yahapalana-as-a-puppet-regime-part-10-section-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2019\/09\/15\/yahapalana-as-a-puppet-regime-part-10-section-2\/","title":{"rendered":"YAHAPALANA AS A PUPPET REGIME Part 10 (section 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

SMART DRIVING\nLICENCES<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Committee on Public Accounts (COPA)\u00a0 found that the government had suffered a loss of around Rs. 4 billion owing to a decision made by the Department of Registration of Motor Vehicles to extend a contract given to a private company to issue smart driver licences. The private company had a contract for seven years. When its term ended, in 2016, the Department gave it a two-year extension. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The private company should have handed over its machinery used for the issuing of smart licences to the RMV at the end of the contract so that the department could issue licences on its own. However, the company instead of handing over their machines, continued to obtain extensions, causing a massive loss to the government. If the task had been carried out by the Department it could have earned an average income of Rs. 120 million a month. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to the contract, the private company was to provide technology and training to RMV officials but they had not done so. The RMV officials said that they did not have a sufficient number of employees to be sent for the training considering the workload at the Department. Officials said they were not ready to take over the task of issuing smart licenses themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

COPA then ordered Chairman, RMV to take immediate action to take over the task of issuing smart driver licenses from the private company. If the RMV needed, it could set up a company managed by the government for the purpose and the approval of the Cabinet could be obtained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SRI LANKA\nINSTITUTE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (SLIIT) <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

SLIIT stands on a 25-acre land owned by Mahapola Education Trust Fund (METF). SLIIT was built by Mahapola at a cost of Rs 373 million at Malabe. The Malabe facility was estimated at Rs 408 million.\u00a0 An agreement signed in 2005 said SLIIT would pay METF either Rs. 8 million or 20% of the net profit, whichever was greater. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a0Instead on May 12, 2015, METF\u00a0\u00a0 leased the land, on which SLIIT stands, at Rs. 20 million per annum for 60 years and also signed an agreement that made SLIIT independent of Mahapola. The deal was finalised during the yahapalana 100-day programme, observed critics.\u00a0 Auditor General said in his report on the METF, that due to the new agreement, the Trust lost Rs. 120.99 million between May 2015 and December 2017. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

METF was headed\nby the Chief Justice. Justice K. Sripavan, Head of METF told\nthe Presidential Commission of Inquiry investigating corruption in the current\nadministration that the METF Board of Trustees had not authorized the 2015\nagreement between the Trust and SLIIT to make the institute an independent body.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He said that a board minute was presented to him by Wickrema Weerasooriya which said that the Board had approved the two agreements, when in fact, there had been no discussion at the Board meeting on the matter. “I\u00a0 informed him that it was misleading information and asked him to remove that part immediately,” Sripavan informed the Commission.<\/em> Usually, the Director of the Trust prepared the minutes. But minutes of the 56th\u00a0and 57th\u00a0board meetings had been prepared by Weerasooriya as the\u00a0 Director had been removed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two appointed members, namely, Padmadeva Rajakaruna and Dr. Wickrema Weerasooriya had signed the agreement with SLIIT and told the other members that as two appointed members by ministers they had the power to do so. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Padmadeva Rajakaruna had told the Commission that he had been given permission to sign an agreement with SLIIT. Rajakaruna produced a document which he claimed contained the minutes of the 56th board meeting of Mahapola trustees on the decision, and two trustees, appointed by the Minister, had been authorized to enter into an agreement with the SLIIT. However, the official from the Attorney General\u2019s Department pointed out that Rajakaruna\u2019s document was different from the one-handed over by the Head of the METF. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ELECTRICITY\n(1)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power and Energy Ministry has since January 2019\u00a0 submitted multiple Cabinet papers seeking approval for varying quantities of emergency power. In June 2019\u00a0 Cabinet approved the purchase of 200MW from a Turkish Karpowership barge for six months and another Karpowership barge for nine months. They are being contracted without tender. The CEB has already bought 100MW of emergency power from Aggrekko International, Altaaqa Alternative Solutions of the United Arab Emirates and V Power Holdings of Hong Kong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ELECTRICITY\n(2)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Power, Energy and Business Development Ministry is planning to dip into the consumers’ deposits to the tune of billions of rupees, says Electricity Consumer Rights Movement the Ministry was planning to obtain permission to utilize the money of the electricity consumer deposits of the Ceylon Electricity Board. They were \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0planning to take Rs. 1.45 billion from \u00a0CEB\u00a0 and Rs. 500 million from Lanka Electricity Company (LECO) without paying an interest to the consumer. According to\u00a0 Section 28 of the\u00a0 Electricity Act\u00a0 CEB and LECO had to pay an interest on consumer deposits. They have not done so for years.\u00a0 Yahapalana government \u00a0\u00a0has taken steps to remove the Section 28 from the Electricity Act to enable the CEB and LECO to use the consumers\u2019 deposits as they wished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ELECTRICITY\n(3)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Minister\nKarunanayake took over the ministry in January, he has floated various\nemergency power proposals; contracted barge-mounted electricity outside\naccepted procurement procedure; and ordered the Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB)\nto appoint 27 personal nominees as coordinators to projects that have not even\nbeen initiated,  said Dushana Vidu Nethin  ,an association of professionals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We also\nnoted that the Minister of Power and Energy has taken various steps to halt solar\npower development in Sri Lanka. [He has taken] \nsteps to increase the electricity tariff. This  would drastically affect the development of\nsolar power in the country as there will be no incentive for people to purchase\nroof top solar power plants”.Minister Karunanayake is also attempting to\nreduce the PUCSL\u2019s status of Economic, Technical and Safety regulator\u201d to only\n“safety regulator” and “ombudsman” of the electricity\nindustry, said Dushana Vidu Nethin. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

APPOINTMENTS\n(4)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A probe\nconducted by Committee on Public Enterprises (COPE)  found that 1,707 persons had been recruited as\nStaff Assistants and Office Assistants of the National Savings Bank on the\nbasis of lists sent to the bank by the Private Secretary of the Minister of\nFinance. 104 persons had been recruited in 2017, 36 in 2018 and 250 in 2019.\nThey had been given letters of appointment. General Manager, NSB stated that\nthis has been the procedure since 2008. We changed it in 2018 and recruited\nthem as trainees, but they also  were\nrecruited from the list..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

APPOINTMENTS\n(5)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Media\nreported that in June 2019  , Power and\nEnergy Minister Ravi Karunanayake had \nordered Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) to appoint 27 of his personal\nnominees as project coordinators\u201d for a spate of  non- existent power plants and the  power transmission facilities for the\nnon-existent power plants. Project\ncoordinators usually work under a project manager to help ensure tasks are\ncompleted on time and within budget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of these\npower plants are not in operation, .some have not even gone before the Cabinet,\nsaid the media. These include two new coal power plants, two  government-to-government funded 300MW natural\ngas combined cycle power plants, the proposed 300MW natural gas combined cycle\npower plant by the CGL Windforce Consortium and the 300MW natural gas combined\ncycle power plant by Lakdanawi. A spate of wind, hydro and solar power parks\naround the country  area\nalso included. These project coordinators were to be appointed in view of\nprevailing security situation of the country\u201d. It is not explained how  these new project coordinators could help the\nprevailing security situation, concluded the media. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

APPOINTMENTS\n(6)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

in  July 2019 Dushana Vidu Nethin, (DVN) ,  condemned the appointment of Power and Energy\nMinister Ravi Karunanayake\u2019s lawyer Sandun Gamage to the fifth vacant\nposition of Commissioner at the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka.\nGamage\u2019s name was approved by the Constitutional Council. Gamage represented\nKarunanayake multiple times during hearings into the Central Bank bond scam\nbefore the Presidential Commission appointed to inquire into the case, DVN\nsaid. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

BUSINESS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yahapalana government announced that  it would set up a National Single Window\n(NSW) to help business. Sri Lanka\u2019s National Single Window (NSW) will allow\nbusinesses to lodge information and documents with a single entry point, to\nfulfil all import, export and transit-related regulatory requirements. A NSW\nBlueprint would be released soon, said officials. The implementation of the NSW\nis  a legal obligation under the World\nTrade Organisation\u2019s (WTO) Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA), which Sri Lanka\nhas signed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was\ndiscussed at public-private consultative organised by the International Trade\nCentre (ITC), in collaboration with Government of Sri Lanka (GOSL),in September\n2018. It was suggested that Sri Lanka\nshould take a gradual approach and not try to bite off more than it can chew.\nThe participants pointed out that \nimproving the functionality of a NSW is more important than extending\nthe service to all traders and geographical locations in the country at the\nstart of operations. It should start with Colombo port. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sri Lanka should go for a more phased\nimplementation, where change is gradually introduced over a longer time frame,\nstarting on a small or limited scale. This\nwas what Indonesia had done. In its first stage Indonesia limited the activity\nto three government agencies in  one\nport. Second stage covered five seaports, while the third stage expanded the\nINSW to all import procedures in the ports. The fourth stage in July 2009\ncovered import procedures for Government agencies in a seaport, airport, and\ndry-port. In January 2010, the fifth stage made the INSW mandatory for all\nimport procedures in five ports. In the final phase, the INSW was extended to\n21 ports and all import-export procedures in the country. (Continued) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS SMART DRIVING LICENCES Committee on Public Accounts (COPA)\u00a0 found that the government had suffered a loss of around Rs. 4 billion owing to a decision made by the Department of Registration of Motor Vehicles to extend a contract given to a private company to issue smart driver licences. The private company had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93031","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=93031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93031\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}