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Army tailors cut by politics? The reason - they will not have material to stitch combat uniforms though a Cabinet Appointed Tender Board has awarded a tender to a foreign supplier to provide 300,000 metres of cloth. This is in addition to a tender to supply 170,000 pieces of camouflage T-shirts. The Cabinet Tender Board's award had been made after a two year long process where a Technical Evaluation Committee had examined the samples of cloth submitted by prospective tenderers. It is only thereafter that the award had been made to the foreign firm in question. But after the process had been duly completed, a Cabinet Minister, The Sunday Times learns, had intervened to ask the Cabinet Sub-Committee, which had approved the award, to reconsider its decision. The Minister is learnt to be in favour of now awarding the tender to a firm in his own electorate on the grounds that they produced the same material locally. The firm in turn is said to have financially supported the Minister's election campaign at the 2001 Parliamentary elections.
The Navy had declared the sailor missing while on duty. Meanwhile a sailor who surrendered to the LTTE on Friday at Karainagar in Jaffna has been handed over to the Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission (SLMM). He was identified as S.P. Dhammika Kumara. Tigers
yet to pay radio fee Customs duties are still to be paid, Finance Minister, K.N. Choksy admitted yesterday. He told The Sunday Times the Customs Department was now looking at the legal and other issues. "Since the import of equipment was made by the Norwegian Embassy, they were entitled to tax concessions.” “There are also four court cases pending including one against the Customs," he said. In another unprecedented move, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission is only asking the LTTE now to provide them with technical data for them to issue a receipt for Rs 67,500 being licence fee. In a letter to S. Pulithevan, Secretary General of the LTTE Peace Secretariat, the Director General of the TRCSL, Themiya Hurulle has asked for the geographical co-ordinates, antenna gain, antenna type and polarization, antenna height and make, model and serial number of the transmitter. In all instances where the Commission had granted approval for the operation of radio stations, upon recommendations made by the Media Ministry, these data have been first obtained. In the case of the LTTE, it has been an exception. Mr. Hurulle told the Sunday Times that the Media Ministry had already issued the licence for the operation of the new transmitter and that there were three court cases pending against this decision. He said the TRC was only requested by the ministry to see whether the frequency of 98 Mhz formally requested by the LTTE was available and TRC had found that it was and had communicated it to the Ministry. According to Mr. Hurulle, the Ministry based on this, has granted the licence to the LTTE. Ravi
K. blasts Central Bank governor over Pramuka “Despite the recommendation by the Central Bank’s own (Bank) supervision department that a takeover should be facilitated due to immense hardships faced by thousands of depositors and great harm to the financial sector, no steps whatsoever have been taken by the governor A.S. Jayawardene to initiate the take-over of Pramuka,” Commerce Minister Ravi Karunanayake told a packed meeting of the Pramuka depositors and stakeholders associations at a public hall in Colombo. The minister told about 750 aggrieved depositors – some who have lost their entire pension savings due to the collapse of the bank – that he had discussed the matter with Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe and submitted a Cabinet paper on the issue. The PM and the Cabinet are backing his efforts to resolve the issue, the minister added. Karurunanayake, invited by the two associations to address their members and offer some kind of support to their struggle to get Pramuka up and running despite a negative attitude by the Central Bank, said that a licence should never have been given in the first place to Rohan Perera to run a bank but added that the government won’t allow depositors to suffer because of the crisis. The minister told The Sunday Times that in his Cabinet paper he had asked that the Central Bank be held responsible for issuing a licence if it thought it fit to withdraw it. He has also recommended that action be taken to freeze assets of the directors and an independent commission appointed to probe the circumstances in which the licence was issued and why the bank had collapsed.
The presentation will include a mixture of old and new songs and will be presented by the present students and past pupils. There will be solo performances of the piano, violin and flute. The programme is organised by a group of parents and directed by Jith Peiris. |
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