Budget Debate: Committee Stage — 4th Day

Votes of the Ministry of Provincial Councils and Local Government
The concept of Provincial Councils is devolution and devolution is for wider participation - Jayamaha

Parliament met at 9.30 a.m. on Tuesday 24, November, 1998, with Speaker K. B. Ratnayake in the chair.

After presentation of petitions and oral questions answered, House sat in Committee to discuss the votes of the Ministry of Provincial Councils and Local Government.

D. H. N. Jayamaha (UNP - National List) moved a cut of Rs. 10 from the votes of the Ministry of Provincial Councils and Local Government.

He said: The concept of Provincial Councils is devolution. Devolution is for wider participation.

I am not finding fault with the Minister. He had inherited legacy both from the previous government as well as the present government.

The 13th Amendment provides for devolution. Under the Constitution a Provincial Councils has 39 items devolved to them on which it is empowered to make statutes.

Finances are necessary for the efficient functioning of the Provincial Councils. There is a Finance Commission comprising of three eminent men to allocate money for Provincial Councils.

The Finance Commission's recommendations must be placed before the Council. Has this happened? I have been here as a back bencher for three years. The Minister must take serious notice of this.

Very little has been allocated to Provincial Councils under the Appropriation Bill.

Last year you obtained supplementary estimates totalling Rs. 697 m. If there was proper financial management there would not have been the need to ask for supplementary votes.

Governors have sometimes acted illegally. In one case, case against a governor had been taken to court.

T. B. Ekanayake (PA - Kurunegala District) said: There had been abuses of the financial regulations, by Provincial Councils during the UNP regime. Tender procedure has been totally ignored. The financial problems in the Provincial Councils have arisen from the flouting of laws, regulations and procedures.

For instance the North Western Provincial Council bought two generators for the Chilaw Base Hospital at a cost of Rs. 8 million, without calling for Tenders.

Following a public revelation of the issue an investigation was held. The Electrical Engineer, Ceylon Electricity Board reported that the two generators were as old as 8 years.

A Colombo company which supplied the generators have paid back a sum of Rs. 3.5 million without even been asked to make a refund.

However the NWPC has not taken any action against the persons involved in the fraud.

P. Selvarasa (TULF - Batticaloa District) said: Officers in the Provincial Councils are undergoing a lot of trouble. Only Rs. 0.2 million is sent instead of Rs. 1 million which is required to carry on the work. Every year, the Minister must send the necessary money at the right time, so that the officers could carry on their work without humiliation.

It is as a result of my request to the Secretariat, that the money was sent. It should not however necessiate the intervention of a Minister to see that these officers in the Provincial Councils receive the money.

The North Eastern Provincial Council should come forward to carry out their work in a smooth manner.

All the roads in the Divisional Secretariats seem to be sand-laid roads. With the help of the Minister we developed a few roads. The Road Development Authority did not develop these roads. Necessary funds are made available. If not, the few roads that are developed will deteriorate to the level of a sand-laid road.

M. M. Weerasinghe (PA - Digamadulla District) said: Although Provincial Councils were created in order to devolve power, specially to the North-East, it is this very North Eastern Province where no Provincial Council exists today.

Serious problems have cropped up due to the non-existence of a Provincial Council for the North-East.

No adequate funds are given to the NE Provincial Council.

U. L. M. Mohideen (SLMC - National List) said: I am thankful that the President has appointed Alavi Mowlana a staunch supporter of the SLFP as Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government. Local Government was a portfolio held by President's late father S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike.

Though the Provincial Councils were created to resolve the ethnic problem, experiences of the past four years show that they have failed to resolve the crisis. Instead they have created more problems.

Officials of the North Eastern Provincial Council do not respect the elected members of the North East.

A. Mapitigama (UNP-Trincomalee Dist.) said: From what we have learnt the budget had been prepared by the President. It is the greatest insult to a minister to merely read the budget.

In this budget, various ministers have managed to withdraw various proposals. For instance the railway charges, levy from foreign employees, etc. This shows the nature of the budget. You have not performed the duties of the Provincial Councils. You have not giving any co-oporation.

You are aware that if there is anything to be done, it has to be done with a clear conscience. If you do not perform your duties, the people will not have any faith in you.

We have not received moneys which were to be given from various ministries. If not, they should use the money to bridge the budgetary gap. So at least give us the necessary money to develop our areas.

Please appoint a Muslim and a Tamil so that the minorities will be created to a fair manner. Because if services are not performed properly, they will have suspicions as to whether they are treated fairly or not.

Land deeds have not been giving in the Trincomalee district.

The highest expenditure is the batta and subsistent allowances. They are claimed even if no work is done. Please appoint a committee to look in to this as state money is wasted.

Your henchmen carry out various corrupt practices and frauds.

The BTT which is charged is kept by the Central Government Rs. 300-400 lakhs that we should receive is credited to the Central Bank.

You have blocked 45 lakhs of rupees because it is a UNP Provincial Council. People give a mandate to a local or provincial council. It is their government. If you block any development in these areas, it is a traitorous action.

A. H. M. Alavi (UNP-Kurunegala Dist.) said: I know that this ministry has not been able to get any credit for what they have done. It is the President who has got all the credit, instead.

Ekanayaka said 6 members of Parliament have been giving the authority to rule the provincial councils. I would like to say that Navinna resigned from being a provincial council member and he made various charges against these people who were ruling the provincial councils. Although he got the highest number of preferential votes, he was not appointed as Chief Minister, but instead appointed as Deputy Minister. He has not been able to do anything in the Kurunegala district.

The Pradeshiya Sabhas were able to develop roads at a cost of Rs. 10 lakhs.

The Road Development Authority has spent Rs. 30 lakhs to develop the Yapahuwa road. I would like to tell you to get the Pradeshiya Sabhas to repair and develop roads in the areas and do it at a lower cost. I would like the minister to allocate money to the Pradeshiya Sabhas for the development of roads.

Douglas Devananda (EPDP-Jaffna Dist): I thank the Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government for giving a helping hand whenever a request was made.

Following the Indo-Sri Lanka agreement in 1987 the Tamil organisations gave up their arms and joined the political mainstream and contested elections. We believed the Sinhalese leadership to have accepted all those who consider Sri Lanka our motherland. We hope it would be a turning point of devolving power among the Tamil speaking people.

The district administration should be handed over to the provinces and taken away from the centre. All that required is to have a political will to do this.

The Agrarian Service should also be taken away from the centre and handed back to the provinces. As for roads and highways, only national highways should come under the centre.

I request the government to hand over all the B-class roads to the provinces.

It will show the Tamils that the government is interested in development. This transference only needs a gazette notification.

The NIRP must also be left to the provinces. The centre should be confined only to negotiation and obtaining funds from donors.

Secretaries of ministries should not usurp the functions of the heads and deputy heads of departments. The heads of departments do not have vehicles while the secretaries have.

The next problem is the shortage of staff in the North-East province. The President was helpful in solving the problems yet there still remained problems in the bureaucracy. In the health sector there was still a shortage of staff. There is no Director of Health in the North-East Province. How could local authorities function district staff?

The next problem is the interference in civil administration by security forces especially in Trincomalee. The Brigadier is preventing the opening of a market there. Trincomalee needs 5 markets. If these things are not worked out the Tamil speaking people will not have faith in the government.

P. Devaraj (CWC - Colombo District ) said: Provincial Councils came in the wake of demands for some form of autonomy by the Tamil people. But they failed to deliver the good.

There is no coordination between the Centre and the Provincial Councils.

Pradeshiya Sabhas: we could consider whether this system too could be changed. Let the Pradeshiya Sabhas act as coordinating bodies. Cut down their number of elected members.

M. H. Mohamed: Both the last Government and the present government has miserably failed to give Provincial Councils their powers. There are instances where, power given early had been re-taken. This is one of the reasons for the failure of the many problems.

Vijithamuni Soysa (PA-Moneragala District) said: If we cannot devolve power fifty years after independence we are doomed.

The problems of the Tamil community should be resolved. If the Provincial Council system has failed to resolve the problems, they are useless.

A big fraud has been committed by the Uva Provincial Council by depriving the people of funds running into millions meant for development of the tanks of the North East province.

Maithripala Sirisena, Minister of Mahaweli Development. said Opposition alleged that the government was not giving sufficient funds to the Kataragama Pradeshiya Sabha.

A similar allegation was made by Alavi.

I want you to examine your conscience and ask yourself how you treated the opposition controlled Pradeshiya Sabhas when you were in power.

The UNP's tenure of the North Western Provincial Council is now over. I will assure you that we will win the NWPC in the coming elections. There is no doubt about it. We will take a control of the NWPC by most democratic means.

Suranimala Rajapakse (UNP - Gampaha District) said: Government must declare its position in regard to Provincial Councils. If you are against PC why are you spending money on Provincial Councils today?

V. Balachandran (DPLF-Vanni District) said: There are no elected representatives for the North Eastern Provincial Council. Meanwhile two of the elected representatives of the Local Authorities in Jaffna District have been assassinated. Several members of the Pradeshiya Sabhas have been gunned down.

The elected representatives of the Local authorities do not have sufficient security.

No sufficient funds either have been allocated for the North East. When you allocate funds you treat North and East as one unit.

The North and East should be treated as one unit for the purpose of administration too.

The Governor of the North East must be able to see that the different communities living in the North East are treated alike. There should be no discrimination.

A. H. M. Azwer (UNP - National List) said: A government member slang mud at the Health Minister of the North Western Province.

Mr. Johnson Fernando, the Health Minister was an active member of the party and the government party members are afraid of him.

It is not true to say that no tenders were called when the generators were purchased for the Chilaw hospital. Tenders were called. The papers are in the Council office. The Minister can have access to them any time.

The allegations that the generators were old ones too is wrong. The supplying company has certified the generators as being new.

It is the Governor who says that the generators were old ones. There had been a conspiracy against the UNP administration of the MWPC. The supplier has now called for an independent inquiry into this complaint.

P. Sumathipala (Deputy Minister of Provincial Councils and Local Government said: I thank all those who made important comments on the votes of this Ministry including D. H. N. Jayamaha.

We will be presenting a supplementary estimate to pay the incentive allowances of officers working in the North Eastern Provincial Council areas.

The intention of creating a separate Ministry for Provincial Councils was to implement the Provincial Councils provisions fully.

Funds have been allocated for provinces to identity and develop areas of tourist attraction in their areas.

The government is exploring ways for the local government institutions to raise sufficient revenue from within their own areas to pay the salaries of their employees. At present some local authorities have to be assisted by government in the payment of salaries.

Joseph Michael Perera (UNP - Gampaha District) said: You must secure the participation of the whole civil society in the administration of the local authorities and Provincial Councils. Today the people's representatives in these institutions represented a very limited area of public opinion.

Your government sometimes back dissolved two Provincial Councils. The Supreme Court held that the dissolution was illegal. How then do people believe in you? How credible is your attempts to devolve power.

Allocation of money to Provincial Councils will not do. You must provide the funds too with urgency.

Storeyed commercial buildings are being constructed on land belonging to the CGR illegally. Representations made to the President, the Governor and others have not been responded to.

There are large scale encroachment of public land. No one seem to be concerned. Politicians, police officers and other influential persons are reported to be involved in these activities. What is the use of your ministry if you cannot step in and stop illegal acts.

Continued tomorrow

‘Budget – a tragedy for the country and its people’
Full text of Ronnie de Mel’s Budget speech

What have you done for four years to fulfill your election promises. This beautiful blue book, this beautiful book with this beautiful picture of Her Excellency, the whole country fell in love with this blue book and with this picture - fell in love with this blue book and this picture. I do not blame them Sir. I do not blame them. So they fell in love with this blue book and this picture and they voted for this government. What have you done, what have you done for four years to fulfill the promises held out in your four - Budgets. Take even your last Budget. Take, even your last Budget, precious little Sir. Absolutely little. A tiny bit here, a tiny bit there but precious little everywhere. Then Sir what promise, what hope, what guarantee can you give the people of this country that even half, even one quarter of the targets and promises held out in this Budget will be implemented before you go out in the year 2000. Particularly there is the question of time Sir. The time factor is important. What you could not do in four years will you be able to do in your last one or two years. A dying government, a government breathing its last. Now Mr. Deputy Speaker we cannot hope for much in this regard. Your past record will be your judge, your past record is totally against you totally against you. Your past record condemns you.

Record
Let us for a moment compare the first four years record of the UNP Government of 1977 with the first 4 years’ record of this Government. That is a good test. That is a sound test. The first four years of the UNP with the first four years of this Government. That is a fair test, a fair comparison. Everyone will agree. The UNP came to power in July 1977. We had all our economic plans ready when we came to power. With my first Budget in November 1977 we took the first step to liberalize the economy of Sri Lanka after nearly 21 years of a semi Marxist state and a semi Marxist economy which had totally ruined this country — shortages, scarcities and queues, semi starvation. Along with the first Budget I introduced the accelerated economic program of the UNP Government and I unrolled my first rolling plan of Investment and Development on a rolling programme basis. Based on this accelerated development programme in my first Budget we undertook in our first four years the greatest programme of economic development ever undertaken in the 2500 years’ history of this land. Nothing regarding the actual implementation of the Budget was left to chance unlike you. Everything was done, planned and programmed and financed beforehand, well in time before the actual presentation of the Budget in November. All the money for this massive programme of development was found by me, in principle at least,before the Budget was actually presented by me. No Budget Sir I would like the Hon. Minister to listen to me, no Budget should be presented without money, without money for all the programmes in that Budget. If you present a Budget without money it is worse than trying to stage Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark — if you try to present a Budget without money for all the programmes in any Budget, whether in this country or abroad the first prerequisite is that you should also have the money in place for all the programmes of the Budget. For how many programmes of this Budget, for how many programmes of the last four Budgets was the money in place? Not one cent had been found. Only airy fairy promises. Sir, when we did this in 1977, two months before the Budget of 1977, in September, in fact, in one trip abroad I went to six countries, to Britain, to USA, to Sweden, to Cananda, to Germany and to Japan. I went to Washington Sir, met Mr. Robert MacNamara, President of the World Bank and, Johannes Wittaveen then Managing Director of the IMF and obtained approval in principle for the liberalization of the economy which we were going to undertake in our first Budget and for our accelerated programmes of economic development envisaged in the Budget. I immediately obtained on the spot, immediately obtained on the spot the promise of a standby facility of US Dollars 500 million from Mr. Wittaven in the IMF to underwrite Sri Lanka’s liberalization of the economy which I was going to commence with my first Budget. Mr. MacNamara and his World Bank officials were somewhat reluctant to finance any of the dams or any of the power stations or any of the head works of the Mahaweli.

But I got his approval for Mahaweli in principle. They were only interested if at all in some down-stream work. Therefore I had to appeal to certain countries direct to get the headworks done. I went straight from Washington to London, met Prime Minister James Callaghan, Chancellor Dennis Healey, Minister of Overseas Development Judith Hart and the then Minister of Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, I forget his name now - I have forgotten these things now, things that took place 21 years ago, and obtained their support in principle for Victoria, an outright non repayable grant of lOO million Sterling Pounds, in today’s money, worth more than 1 billion Sterling Pounds. Today, Victoria cannot be done for even l billion Sterling Pounds. So, that 1 million Sterling Pounds in 1977 is worth 1 billion Sterling Pounds in today’s money. I next went to Sweden Sir and met the then Prime Minister Mr. Falldin Thorbjorn, the Foreign Minister Ola Ullsten, who was also in charge of foreign aid, Finance Minister Karin Soder. Also I met Soder my old friend Olof Palme. We had known him in the old Socialist Alliance days.

— Who was assassinated later, I got this help for this. Then I met my old friends whom I had known for years Gunhav Myrdal and Alvar Myrdan Alvar was the Minister of Health. And also Gunnav Hakser who was in the University of Uppasala . They were, shall we say, the grandees, the intellectual and political grandees of Sweden, and with their help I managed to get round that Government. I was their helply that helped me to get US$ 200 million also as an outright non repayable grant from to Sweeden. I next, went to Canada, Sir, met Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the then Finance Minister, now the Prime Jean Chreties - I think the Hon Minister must have met Jean Chritiec this time if he went there. Then I had some friends there in the Cabinet, Monique Begin , a very pretty lady whom I had known from 20 or 30 years ago.

Approval
Marc Lalonde, another Minister in that Cabinet, Alan Mac Eacher who was the Deputy Prime Minister who was also in charge of economic aid at that time. I met all of them and got their approval to finance Maduru Oya, another US$ 100 or US$ 150 million. I next went to Washington on the same trip and met Vice President Mondale in the absence of President Carter, the Secretary to the Treasury Michael Bluementhal, and the then Secretary of State and also the Head of US Aid Governor Gilligan and obtained US approval to finance a part of the downstream work. I, next went to Germany, met Chancellor Helmut Schmidt , Finance Minister Hans Mathoeffer, Minister of Economic Affairs Joseph Stveivhev Minister of Economic Cooperation Madame Schlei and also my dear friends Count Lambsdorp and Klaus Dohnanyi and obtained their help for German support in principle for Randenigala which was going to come later as the World Bank strongly objected to more than two Dams and Power Stations being done at the same time. Even though I got the money we had to postpone the Randenigala Project because the World Bank was against it because of the Budgetary and inflationary effects of too large a development progoramme.

On my return, Sir, I came through Japan, met Prime Minister Fukuda minister of Finance Takeshita, the Minister of Foreign Affiars Sintavo Abe the MITI Minister Tanaka and obtained Japanese support for the development of the Port of Colombo. All this was done in one trip, Sir, and in one month before presenting my first Budget in November 1977. Only then, I returned to Sri Lanka and presented my First Budget assured of all the money necessary to underwrite the liberalization of the economy, all the money necessary for an accelerated programme of economic development of the country. We saw to it, Sir, that the money was there, before we talked, before we announced it to the people. We saw to it that the money was there in place and we only had to present the Budget and start work immediately. Nothing was included in a Budget Speech in our time unless the money was available and guaranteed. You did nothing of that sort, Hon. Minister in the last four years. Only airy fairy-promises and airy fairy tales of what you are going to do. After four years you are still at square one struggling to get even one cent from the IMF. Task you, Have you got one cent from the IMF? You are still struggling to get one cent from the IMF to get an ESAF from the IMF. You have still not got one cent from the IMF. For four years you have still not been able to get IMF Endorsement of your economic policies and your economic and financial management. I will come to their report soon. Even to qualify for an ESAF, have not been able to do.

IMF Missions, Sir, come and go. But not one cent yet has been obtained from the IMF. You speak of the Galle Harbour and the Colombo Matara Highway. Have you got one cent for the Galle Harbour ? One cent for the Colombo - Matara Highway ? You are now trying to go to the commercial markets. I would like the Hon. Minister to tell us whether this is true? You are now trying to go to the commercial markets and get a loan at very exorbitant rates of interest to meet your defence expenditure. Six months LIBOR plus two and a half per cent. Where in the world a soverign country with a sovereign guarantee take money at six months’ LIBOR plus two and a half per cent ?

Continued tomorrow