A stinking story
Editorial-June 12, 2015, 9:04 pm
Parliament was told a stinking story on Thursday. Okay, okay, everything uttered in that place stinks to high heavens. (A big stench emanated the other day when two heavyweights clashed.) But, this particular story was different in that it was about four toilets among other things.
Media Minister Gayantha Karunathilake revealed that the ceremonial opening of the Mattala and Hambantota fuel storage facilities under the previous government had cost the taxpayers Rs. 6.6 million. Of that amount, Rs. 825,000 had been spent on refreshments, the Minister said. What took the cake, however, was that Rs. 215,000 had been paid for four mobile toilets, of all things, though there were enough washrooms where the ceremony took place.
It looks as if those who went all the way from Colombo to Hambantota had done nothing but eating and …, well, that is left to our readers’ imagination.
We wonder whether the Media Minister has got his facts right about the toilets. Was Rs. 215,000 entirely spent on hiring them? We raise this query because, according to a report we carried the other day, in an Indian state people are being paid for using public toilets as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Clean India campaign. Did the guests at the Hambantota ceremony also get paid like the Indians? Else, it defies comprehension how on earth such a whopping sum was spent on four mobile toilets.
Minister Karunathilake named only a few of those who had attended the Hambantota event. Will he release the full list of invitees who wasted their time and energy besides people’s money to travel with their security contingents and officials to Hambantota for that purpose? We bet our bottom dollar that he won’t be able to do so. For, among them must have been the turncoats who have now taken moral high ground, condemning the criminal waste of public money under the Rajapaksa government.
Wasteful expenditure on food and toilets in Hambantota may have thankfully stopped after the change of government in January, but it goes on unabated elsewhere. There is a place near the Diyawanna Lake notorious for generously spending public money on expensive comestibles etc in return for nothing save public entertainment in the form of fisticuffs, exchanges of obscenities and mudslinging. We have reported previously that food sufficient for more than 2,000 hungry mouths is discarded at this place every month. If the starving masses are shown what is available at the posh a la carte restaurant there at ludicrously cheap prices they would be shocked.
The Media Minister, no doubt, deserves praise for having revealed how state funds were wasted on useless ceremonies which only helped boost the egos of the leaders of the previous government. He should also reveal to the people the amount of public funds spent on food and beverages in parliamentary restaurants with menus as well as subsidised prices. Most of those are as thin as a rake when they enter Parliament become horizontally gifted in next to no time while the people are starving. They’ve never had it so good!
Will the Media Minister respect the people’s right to information?
