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Home » NewsMay Day: Love’s labour’s lost
Today is May Day. With prices of essential items rising by 300 to 500 percent since 2019, most workers are struggling to cope with economic hardships and provide basic needs to their families. So May Day will mean little to these construction workers, though they work hard from morning till night in the blazing heat [...]
Painful reform process: Many taxes to be raised
The Government will increase income tax, withholding tax, pay-as-you-earn tax and value added tax to levels before the 2019 controversial tax cuts which reduced fiscal revenue to a paltry 8.6 percent of gross domestic product when it should be between 13 and 14 percent. The first to be hiked will be income and PAYE taxes, [...]
Prices of 60 essential drugs increased again; this time by 40 percent
Prices of 60 drugs and medicines have been raised, for the second time in two months with effect from April 28 (Thursday), according to a gazette notification issued by the Health Ministry. The 60 items in the gazetted category come under a ‘Maximum Retail Price’ (MRP) and their prices have been increased as both the [...]
SriLankan Airlines going ahead with re-fleeting subject to COPE request
SriLankan Airlines will go ahead with its re-fleeting plans subject to a three-month delay as requested by the Parliamentary Committee on Public Enterprise (COPE) in view of the country’s economic situation, Chairman Ashok Pathirage said yesterday. The lease agreements on nine of its aircraft will expire by the end of 2023, he pointed out. The [...]
Despite sanctions, CPC wants to buy oil from Russia
Sri Lanka is looking into the possibility of buying fuel from Russia in a fresh bid to keep its import bill low, officials said. On a proposal of the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC), the Treasury has consulted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to look into implication of sanctions imposed on Russia to go ahead with [...]
Deputy Speaker post: Crucial test for Govt. and opposition
A crucial test for the Government and Opposition looms when Parliament meets on Wednesday over the election of a new Deputy Speaker. Sri Lanka Freedom Party’s (SLFP) Ranjith Siyambalapitiya told a media briefing yesterday that he would no longer function as Deputy Speaker after April 30 and the first item on Parliament’s agenda when it [...]
State employee benefits pruned; new measures include suspension of overtime allowances, loan facilities
The cash-strapped Government is implementing tough new measures in the public sector to control public finance. It is suspending various benefits such as overtime allowances and staff loan facilities while deferring new recruitment, according to a circular issued by the Treasury. In the circular addressed to state institution heads, the newly appointed Treasury secretary Mahinda [...]
Monks warn of Sangha edict if President, PM do not quit
Hundreds of Buddhist monks yesterday called on the President and the Government to immediately implement the Mahanayaka Theras’ proposals to resolve the prevailing economic crisis. The monks who gathered at Independence Square warned that if the proposals were not implemented, the Mahanayaka Theras would issue a Sangha Convention edict calling on monks to shun politicians. [...]
Clearance of Octane 95 petrol and crude oil shipments delayed
The US dollar crisis is delaying the clearance of an Octane 95 petrol shipment, with the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation incurring heavy demurrage charges, officials said. Two shipments, one carrying diesel and the other Octane 95, arrived on March 28 and 29, but the delay in clearing the shipments by Friday had cost the Ceylon Petroleum [...]
CCC and BASL join hands to foster economic and political stability
On the invitation of Ceylon Chamber of Commerce (CCC) Chairman Vish Govindasamy, Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) President Saliya Pieris PC presented the BASL’s proposals to “Restore Political and Economic Stability in the Country” to representatives of the Joint Chambers of Commerce, the Organisation of Professional Associations (OPA), the Sri Lanka Medical Association and [...]
May Day: GotaGoGama at Galle Face Green to grab the spotlight this year
Opposition parties have organised major May Day rallies today with the ruling Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) and affiliated parties organising low-key events. As political parties and unions have organised a string of events to mark May Day, the Galle Face Green where thousands have been demonstrating for more than three weeks is also set [...]
Price increase was the only way to go: Litro Gas Chairman
It will take more than a month for the domestic LP Gas shortage to end and supplies to return to normal, newly appointed Litro Gas Chairman Vijitha Herath told the Sunday Times. “We are trying our best to stabilise the situation, and gradually increase our production, but it will take between 1 to 1 1/2 [...]
Global prices rise, but contrasting gas tabs in Dhaka and Colombo
Sri Lankans are still wrestling with each other at gas dealerships, cursing the embattled Gotabaya Rajapaksa government for the comatose operations of state gas company Litro Gas, and the only private supplier, Laugfs Gas, but in Bangladesh, people are paying 591 taka, or the Sri Lankan rupee equivalent of about 2,431 for a 12.5 kilogram [...]
People’s struggle and unions raise heat on embattled rulers
Sri Lankans are preparing for a massive people’s struggle of much greater intensity against the embattled government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Vast street protests are planned next week, leading to a hartal on May 6 if the government does not heed demands made in a symbolic, highly successful island-wide general strike, unions say. Some Buddhist [...]
Protesters demand rights; police demand duties as agitation continues
A young protester who was kicked in the neck by a policeman in front of Temple Trees on Friday has been admitted to the National Hospital of Sri Lanka – but no official record of it had been made by the Police as of Friday night. “He sat down on the road in protest when [...]
A PM is charged; the seedy British Virgin Islands
Offshore criminal activity, dirty money, business jets, corrupt political elites, and the seedy underside of the British Virgin Islands, the notorious UK tax haven which had featured in the Pandora Papers investigation by journalists, have once again come into the spotlight after its Prime Minister Andrew Fahie, was charged in the United States with Colombian [...]
Hundreds of lives of children, seniors in peril in charity homes
An unprecedented rise in the prices of essentials including rice and milk powder, and the lack of medicine are putting the lives of hundreds of Sri Lankan children, seniors, the less-abled and the sick in charity homes at risk. Operating costs have risen sharply at orphanages and homes that are looking after the elderly and [...]
A group wedding unlike no other
Five couples with special needs joined hands in marriage at the same time. The rare event took place on Friday, April 29, at the Namal Hotel in Bandarawela. The five couples ascended the poruwa simultaneously, and performed the wedding rituals together. What was special about this wedding ceremony was that all the brides and the [...]
Careless zoo claims another life — motherless orangutan drowns
The Dehiwala zoo’s baby orangutan, aged about five years, drowned last week in the moat that surrounds its den. It was alone in its den on the night of April 21. Its mother, too, died last December. As a rule, animals that spend the day in larger, open enclosures are caged at night for safety [...]
Rambukkana shooting: Police Superintendent and three officers arrested this week
Colombo Additional Magistrate Shalani Perera on Friday ordered the CID to remand former Kegalle Police Superintendent K. B. Keerthiratne until May 6 in connection with giving orders to shoot at anti-government protesters in Rambukkana and produce him before the Kegalle Magistrate thereafter. SSP K.B. Keerthiratne was arrested at the Narahenpita Police Hospital on Thursday evening. [...]
Drug shortage: State hospitals still managing, but situation may get dire soon, say sources
As the country went into a deeper economic crunch with no signs of immediate hope, state hospitals braced t.hemselves to face a medicine shortage looming closer and closer. Mixed views were expressed by a cross-section of doctors when the Sunday Times contacted numerous hospitals. “Denata manage karanna puluwan (for the moment, we can manage), but [...]
Herbal packs to fight covid: Economic crisis stalls free distribution
The Government’s much-publicised initiative to distribute free herbal packs to fight COVID-19 last year fizzled out when the Ayurveda Department ran out of medicinal herbs and could not replenish stocks owing to the dollar crisis. The Treasury allocated Rs 250mn for the project, of which around Rs 141mn was spent. The balance was returned to [...]
CEP 3: Continuing tussle between 2 bidders shows up Sri Lanka’s compromised procurement process
The construction consortium accused by a Chinese competitor of submitting an inflated bid for the Central Expressway Project’s third section (CEP 3) hit back this week, alleging that the claimed bid of Metallurgical Corporation of China (MCC) is at least 65 percent higher over the project’s lifecycle than its own offer. Lanka Infrastructure Development Consortium [...]
The curse of the executive presidency
A living autopsy For decades, Sri Lanka was ruled by a few select, elite families, power alternating between them. The United National Party (UNP) broke the mould with Ranasinghe Premadasa in 1989. It took the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) until 2005 to do so with Mahinda Rajapaksa. Just as much as Premadasa played the [...]
Cost of living as deadly as the war; northern people want to go back to India
Mohan*, a Jaffna shop owner, never thought he would be forced to leave the country one day with his family to neighbouring India for survival–a decision he did not consider even during the height of the war. These days, he is planning his trip to India via fishing boat and has been busy with the [...]
People fed up as essential food items soar in price by 200-500 percent
Essential goods have shot up in prices by 200-500 percent compared to the period when the present government took over in 2019, statistics reveal. Rice, dhal and sprats are no longer affordable essential items. Dhal, which was sold at a price of around Rs. 145 a kilo in 2019 is now sold for about Rs. [...]
Opportunist, thieving native kaputa, a menace in other lands
According to a news report, several Malaysian women had an embarrassing experience when they lost their undergarments that had been left to dry outside. Their initial suspect was a ‘panty thief’, but the stolen items were found in birds’ nests in the area. The ‘panty thief’ was in fact the house crows. Crows have become [...]
Caw… caw … caw, a call to call to rally for crows
The crows and the much larger ravens, members of the bird family corvidae, got attention this week globally, with International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day falling on April 27. Even though there are no ravens in Sri Lanka there are two types of crows in urban and village settings, said Colombo University’s Zoology professor Sampath [...]
The next meal gets pricier
The economic catastrophe that has engulfed the country continues. Prices of goods continue to skyrocket on a daily basis. Despite prices being high, severe shortages continue to prevail of essential items such as LP gas and milk powder. The suffering of the public is immense. They wait for hours in lengthy queues for gas and [...]