WASTAGE IN SRI LANKA AS IN NO OTHER NATION

Sri Lanka is supposed to be a Third World Developing country. As such, one expects the leaders and officers in charge to be more careful in using equipment, vehicles and other items, most of which have been donated by other nations or organizations.Sri Lanka has received several factories as aid from various countries commencing with the Steel Corporation in Oruwela. The successive governments established the Sugar Corporation, the Cement Corporation, the Printing Corporation, the Milk Board, the Textile Corporation, Reclamation and Land Development Corporation, etc to name a few. How many of these are functioning at present?

Then we have the Road Development Authorities which too has got a lot of equipment and machinery. After use for some time, they are dumped in some vacant land open to the vagaries of weather. They get rusted and is of no further use. One such graveyard is seen adjoining the Hindu Kovil on Mayura Place in Clombo- 6. Even next to the Governor’s office in Trincomalee there is a graveyard where machinery and vehicles belonging to the government are exposed to the vagaries of weather and rusting to be discarded as scrap.

The other such wastage is in the SLTB Depots all over the country where buses considered to be unroadworthy are parked in a manner that they are exposed to the weather and left to rust. The same applies to the old compartments of the Railway in the Dematagoda and Maradana railway yards where a large number of carriages have just been left to “rot” in the sun and rain.

All these machinery, railway compartments and buses could have been repaired and used for a longer period. If not, they should have been sold by auction. Similarly, there are a large number of vehicles in Ministries and Departments which have suffered the same fate which too could have gone under the hammer very much earlier.

Another form of wastage is regarding the roads. A road is repaired and carpeted, and the motorists enjoy a pleasant drive and the passengers a pleasant ride. But this is short-lived as, after some time either the National Water Services Board or the Ceylon Electricity Board will dig the entire road and cover it up in a haphazard manner and thereafter the smoothness of the road ends.

It is only in Sri Lanka that we come across such wastage. When will this paradise get an honest leadership to prevent this type of wastage? Or is it something that will not happen until Diyasena comes?

HM Nissanka Warakaulle