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Discussion soon on mechanism in House to monitor unsolicited project proposals: Speaker
View(s):The proposal by Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremesinghe to set up a Parliamentary mechanism to monitor stand-alone or unsolicited development proposals would be taken up for discussion at the next meeting of party leaders in Parliament, Speaker Chamal Rajapaksa said. On Friday the Opposition Leader said the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament should probe such proposals until a new mechanism is put in place to monitor them.
“I have raised this issue several times .The Government seems to want to hide facts about such proposals. We need to put a mechanism in place to monitor them,” he said. The Opposition Leader has raised the question about the Colombo Port City project several times in Parliament since early February. The project which has been awarded to the China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) had forwarded an unsolicited proposal to the Government.
The Opposition Leader told Parliament on Thursday that CCCC and all its subsidiaries have been debarred by the World Bank (WB) for fraudulent practices in road and bridge development projects it undertook in the Philippines and hence is ineligible to engage in connected projects financed by the WB till January, 2017.
He also said the Government has violated the stipulated guidelines in relation to unsolicited proposals.
Meanwhile, China Harbour Engineering Corporation (CHEC), of which CCCC is the parent company said in a statement issued last week that it has submitted an appeal to the World Bank on its debarment and denied wrongdoing. ”CHEC has been partnering Sri Lanka in major development projects for the past 15 years even before the company became a subsidiary of CCCC. One of the most significant projects is the country’s first major highway, the Colombo-Matara. expressway. CHEC believes that Sri Lanka has great potential to become a regional business centre for South Asia and continues to partner in mega development projects such as the Colombo Port city,” the statement said.