Mahinda’s Bim Saviya fails to achieve targets
- Thursday, 16 January 2014
The Bim Saviya programme launched under the Mahinda Chinthana policies by the Lands and Land Development Ministry has failed to achieve targets.
An audit carried out on the instruction of Auditor General, H.A.S. Samaraweera has reportedly revealed that the issue of land title deeds to owners under the Bim Saviya during the period 2008 to 2012 had not achieved its stated target despite the spending of Rs 1.9 billion.
During the four year period of the entire project, it was envisaged to issue 650,000 title deeds to land owners, and a financial outlay of Rs 3.4 billion had been set aside.
However, only 109,913 deeds, or only 17% of the total number of deeds had been issued so far.
The Auditor General has pointed out that the reasons for the delay were the lack of cooperation among various institutions, computer breakdowns and disagreements on boundaries among land owners.
Rajapaksas to protect the LG chiefs
- Thursday, 16 January 2014
The government has come forward to safeguard the interests of the Rajapaksa loyalists heading local government bodies despite objections raised against them by council members.
The Cabinet has agreed to a proposal to amend the Local Government Act in order to prevent the removal of the head of local government bodies in the event the budget of the respective council is defeated.
The government is trying to amend the law to enable the local government heads to continue with their work despite the defeat of the budgets presented to their councils.
The decision was taken following the string of defeats experienced by the governing party local government bodies headed by it. Many governing party members voted along with the opposition to defeat the 2014 budgets presented in many local government bodies.
