Ceylon Electricity Board employees want to retain all their after utility is restructured. These include a sprawling list allowances approved by Cabinet in 2008, such as an “incentive allowance for correct meter reading”, “hotline allowance,"...
...“station allowance paid to staff who are working in the Nuwara Eliya area” and “one-time and monthly allowance for implementing the Language Policy."
The other benefits sought to be retained are the professional allowance, the semi-professional allowance...
...the post-graduate degree allowance, the “exodus allowance”, the generation allowance, the disturbance allowance, the remote station allowance, the allowance paid to “FM, AFMM and DFMM” (finance, additional finance and deputy finance managers), the special allowance...
...They also did not respond to text messages. One committee member, an additional secretary to the Energy Ministry, refused to take questions, while another member—a Ruhuna University professor—did not answer the phone or messages over two days...
Repost: Adani Group Chairman Gautam Adani was in Sri Lanka in October and met President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and the then Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa. A discussion was also held at the Shangri-La Hotel between Adani’s team, @RajapaksaNamal and some officials. @TimesOnlineLK
And while none of the ministerial portfolios Namal held at the time were related to power and energy, he facilitated crucial aspects of the Adani visit, authoritative sources said.
Official documents show that former Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa instructed the Ceylon Electricity Board’s then Chairman M.M.C. Ferdinando to recognize the project of M/s Adani Green Energy “as a proposal from Indian Government to the Government of Sri Lanka...
Another @TimesOnlineLK editorial on corruption: Nobody gives more insight into why Sri Lanka is drowning in fraud and corruption than three ex-presidents sharing one stage and reflecting on their respective terms in power. #SriLanka
They divulged some hard truths, the likes of which they would not have confessed to while in power. For instance, no politician could carry out fraud without the knowledge of the ministry secretary or chief accountant.
It was difficult to recover stolen assets without the necessary laws or being able to trace whom they belonged to. To get people to attend political rallies, you needed arrack, good food and a comfortable bus.
Israelis are not the only foreigners running illegal businesses/operating on the fringes of the law/evading taxes but they ARE one group and, yes, no action was taken by any government, irrespective of which nationality did/is doing them.
But the threat of violence or terrorism is a separate matter and is not justifiable. It that cannot be conflated with the practices we have been highligting. It is a criminal act which, if perpetrated, has farreaching, damaging and dangerous consequences.
The travel advisories may have drawn some welcome attention to illegal business/tax evasion. But the latter has to be looked at independently, again regardless of which nationality is responsible.
The decision to discontinue granting free tourist visas to Russians and Ukrainians who have been living in Sri Lanka since Feb 2022 (when the Russia-Ukraine war broke out) was taken after monthslong discussions between ministries and was not a knee-jerk reaction, documents show.
There were no objections from the Tourism Ministry or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to stopping the facility. However, the Controller of Immigration and Emigration did not get Cabinet approval for it.
On Feb 1, a full month ago, Immigration wrote to the Public Security Ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Tourism Ministry for their positions. The Foreign Ministry wrote back on Feb 19 saying it had no objection as there were now flights to those countries.