Rs. 207 Million At Sri Lanka Insurance Has Been Swindled
A large sum of money amounting to 207 million rupees at Sri Lanka Insurance has been swindled as a result of the selection of an insurance broker whose license had been cancelled, Transparency International reports. This has occurred in connection with the reinsuring the properties of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation. This allegation is being made by the the Coalition against Corruption.
The Coalition alleges that the reinsurance broker concerned is an Indian named Suresh Balakrishnan who had been involved in a similar fraud while serving at M.F. Insurance and Reinsurance and the Indian authorities had cancelled his license. At an investigation by the Auditor General’s Department it has been revealed that he had not paid the premium Rs 92 million that had to be paid for 2009/2010 to the reinsurance companies in respect of the assets of the Petroleum Corporation. The broker had done the reinsurance under Transasia Management Advisor FZC from United Arab Emirates.
Subsequently, the Rs. 116 million (Rs. 116,850,000/-) reinsurance premium for the Petroleum Corporation for the year 2010/2011 has been paid to Suresh Balakrishnan on 02.07.2010 by the officials of Sri Lanka Insurance on a request made by Balakrishnan the previous day. Thus the total amount of reinsurance is Rs. 208 M.
It is the general practice worldwide to insure highly valuable property among several reinsurance companies in order to ensure that any liability is distributed among them. For this purpose the service of reputed brokers are made use of.
The total value of the assets of the Petroleum Corporation which presently have no insurance cover is estimated to be Rs.75.39 billion (75,97,909,813/-). These include the Sapugaskanda Oil Refinery, oil stocks stored at the refinery, the Sapugaskanda boiler, Orugodawatta terminal, oil stocks at the terminal, property at the Katunayake International Airport and oil stocks there, and the oil stocks at Muthurajawela.
Book Review: Wave By Sonali Deraniyagala
By Marcia Kaye -March 8, 2013
It’s almost inconceivable that a memoir of such exquisite beauty could arise from an event as tragically horrific as the Asian tsunami of 2004. But Sonali Deraniyagala has created exactly that. In her starkly titled true story Wave, she describes losing her entire family — her husband, their two young sons and her parents, who all vanished under the water within a few terrible seconds. But slowly, agonizingly, she has put her life back together, chiefly through piecing together memories of her lost family members. She has brought them vividly to life for us, producing a fiercely moving tribute to them and a life-affirming testament to the strength of anyone —and all those — who have ever survived tragic loss. In a tribute on the book’s cover, Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan-born Canadian author (The English Patient) calls Wave "the most powerful and haunting book I’ve read in years."
How does one cope after such a loss? As Deraniyagala tells it, one doesn’t. In shock and with a raging infection from having consumed so much filthy water, she can’t accept her family is gone. "They are my world. How do I make them dead? My mind toppled."
She takes us through the months-long bedlam of her grief. Cared for by relatives in Colombo, she initially refuses to drink anything alcoholic to help her sleep. But before long she’s polishing off half a bottle of vodka by late afternoon. Her relatives ration sleeping pills, but she easily buys hallucinogens from the corner pharmacy without a prescription. She doesn’t smoke but she stubs out lit cigarettes on her skin. Her relatives hide all the knives. She’s torn: she needs to remember; she needs to forget.
After six months Deraniyagala steels herself to revisit the site of the resort, accompanied by her father-in-law. Remarkably, they find vestiges of her family in that now-stark landscape: the laminated back cover of her husband’s research paper, a half-buried piece of Vikram’s green shirt, blue satin fabric from one of Malli’s dress-up costumes entangled on the branch of a dead tree.
It’s almost two years before she’s able to return to London, and another two before she can set foot in her house. As she sees her boys’ shoes by the bedroom door and an onion peel in a clay pot from the last beef curry Steve made, she’s able to start putting together fragments of the lives of her loved ones. This enables us to know them too, as she remembers Vik’s obsession with cricket, Malli’s theatrics, Steve’s culinary skills, her mother’s love of gossip, her father’s law library.
Deraniyagala explores both the predictable aspects of her grief, such as feelings of being completely bereft, as well as the unexpected ones; for instance, blame and shame. "I lost my dignity when I lost them," she writes. Her identity now escapes her. Is she still a mother? A daughter? She feels laid bare, her "story" too awful to divulge whenever a new acquaintance asks if she’s married or has children. Yet in not revealing the truth she feels deceitful. "I stun myself each time I retell the truth to myself, let alone someone else." She’s horrified that by mourning her sons first, then her husband, then her parents, there may be a pecking order to her grief.
But in discovering, or perhaps creating, a new identity — she is now a visiting research scholar at Columbia University in New York, working on issues of economic development, including post-disaster recovery — she doesn’t discard the old identity.Wave is somehow both jaggedly raw and beautifully crafted at the same time. Above all, it speaks to the power of the human spirit to survive, to love, to remember. It reminds us that these often mundane lives of ours and our families’ must be cherished, because we never know when an extraordinary event may come along to change it all.
Marcia Kaye is an author and journalist who spent time in Sri Lanka before the tsunami.
MP Padmasisri Apologises To LSSP And Escapes Punishment
Y.G. Padmasiri, the Kegalle District MP who violated the decision of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and voted for the impeachment of Chief Justice Shirani Bandaranayake has escaped punishment by apologizing to the Party, Colombo Telegraph understands.
Y.G. Padmasiri
The LSSP’s Central Committee met last weekend to decide on what action should be taken against MP Padmasiri. While Minister Tissa Vitarana had proposed that no action be taken, most members had demanded that stern action be taken as this was not the first time Padmasiri had violated party discipline. When the 18th Amendmentwas taken up in Parliament, both Vitarana and Padmasiri voted for it against the decision of the LSSP that its MPs should abstain from voting. Both were severely reprimanded by the Party.
Colombo Telegraph learns that Padmasiri had finally asked for forgiveness from the Party. He had stated that he was not like Athauda Seneviratne who joined the SLFP. If expelled, he would apply to re-join the party, Padmasiri had stated. The Central Committee had considered his plea for mercy and warned him severely.
Padmasiri had expected to be appointed a Deputy Minister at the last Cabinet reshuffle as a reward for voting against the LSSP decision but is disappointed that he was not considered, LSSPers from Ruwanwella told Colombo Telegraph.
