Tourist
Board fiasco
No finality yet on Mahinda’s appointment
Has President Mahinda Rajapakse backtracked on his own ruling to
appoint a new chairman of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, with the
controversial Udaya Nanayakkara continuing as its head? Even though
Nawalage Bennet Cooray, a former MP, was informed of his appointment
as chairman by the President’s Office on the previous Friday,
he hadn’t still received the letter of appointment from Tourism
Minister Anura Bandaranaike who was away in Dubai.
“I
haven’t still got the letter of appointment,” Cooray
told The Sunday Times FT two days ago. He said a week ago he had
been informed by a senior assistant secretary at the Presidential
Secretariat that the President had notified both the Tourism Minister
and Secretary, Dr M Ramanujam by letter of the new appointment.
This week’s change of events stunned a major section of the
industry which had breathed a sign of relief that Nanayakkara was
being removed, although Cooray was nowhere near their choice.
“This
is very disappointing to us,” said Hiran Cooray, President
of the Sri Lanka Hoteliers Association. “We thought the crisis
was over … but its not.” The industry is not in favour
of Udaya Nanayakkara continuing as tourism chief for many reasons
including his opposition to the new Tourism Development Act, haughty
attitude towards officials and arrogance. The move to appoint Cooray
came after The Sunday Times published a story on the crisis under
the heading 'Tourist Board ex-chief refuses to quit'. Last week,
The Sunday Times published details of how a letter was delivered
by President's secretary Lalith Weeratunge to Minister Bandaranaike
just as he was preparing to leave for the airport on a tourism promotion
mission to Dubai.
NOTE;
The Sunday Times FT published a comment in its last issue on the
situation within the tourism industry, and was very critical of
the conduct of the Minister of Tourism and the Chairman of the Tourist
Board. However, the paper regrets that certain passages therein
contained remarks of a personal nature, which is not the practice
of the newspaper. Due to printing exigencies last week due to the
fact that it was a X'mas edition, these remarks that had been edited
had not been effected and the raw copy had gone into print.
While
The Sunday Times apologises to the two, the Minister and the Chairman
for these remarks of a personal nature, the newspaper re-iterates
the drift of the Comment which was that the country's vital tourism
industry is in deep trouble due partly at least to the official
conduct of the Minister and the Chairman concerned.
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