News
Russians want residents out: Ministers to decide
A cabinet sub-committee has been appointed to look into a request from the Russian embassy to evict residents living near the construction site of its new building in Colombo 7. The committee will be headed by Senior Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake and will include Ministers Dinesh Gunawardena and Rauff Hakeem.
The committee was appointed following a complaint by Minister A.H.M. Fowzie and Mr. Hakeem that residents near the Russian embassy building on a nine-acre site on Bauddhaloka Mawatha had been asked by the Urban Development Authority to leave. Mr. Fowzie said residents had told him that the authorities wanted 40 families evacuated and a Muslim prayer centre removed.
A Russian embassy spokesman told the Sunday Times that the residents were ‘squatters’ and therefore the embassy had made a request to remove them.
He said that they hoped to complete the the construction of the new embassy building by mid-2016.