“Don’t Cry Over Lost Jaggery, Preserve What Is Left”
Somapala Gunadheera
President Rajapaksa’s defeat has invigorated the hue and cry against the Southern Mega Projects (SMP). Their misplacement, magnitude, wastefulness and irrelevance are being highlighted in addition to the corruptions alleged to be associated with them. Not a word is heard in their praise.
Before it is too late, I consider it my duty to leave this record behind me on my memory of these Projects, from my official association with them from their inception. Southern development was a hot topic of discussion in the eighties with Japanese assistance and Marga participation. I remember participating in these discussions around the late seventies when I was with Marga, having lost my job as Secretary after the 1977 election. There was widespread dissatisfaction then about the comparative under-development in the South. The consensus was that more and more special projects should be introduced to the South, if that area was to be developed speedily.
A failed attempt
The SMPs were a logical offshoot of that thinking. When CBK came to power as President in the mid-nineties, she created the Southern Development Authority to accelerate the development of the South and appointed an enthusiastic architect as its Chairman. The SDA functioned from its office in Colombo with a coterie of hand-picked assistants. They concentrated on establishing mega projects in the South to the exclusion of small village development initiatives, with the result that there was no visible progress on the ground. Angered by this state of affairs, Ministers in the South protested against the SDA and its Chairman offered to resign from his post.Read More