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| Sunday, 6 July 2003 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Govt. urged to build cities with all facilities The Government should take immediate steps to develop cities with all facilities in every province. This will ease not only congestion, but also the problems faced by people who come to the city in search of greener pastures. As a pilot project, the Government can select 10 big cities and develop all infrastructure facilities including the road network, water, sanitation, housing and schools, said Chairman Engineering Construction and Infrastructure Committee of the National Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka Dudley Fernando. This will not only develop the cities, but also ease congestion in and around the capital. It will require huge investments, but if done in a systematic manner, the long-term benefits will outweigh the money invested by the Government. For example, only a few cities in the country get water from the main lines while all others depend on their own wells even for drinking water. Only Colombo has a central sewer system and with plots of land becoming smaller in size, this poses a major health risk as the septic tanks are near the wells, resulting in the water being contaminated. This will be aggravated in the future, he added. Expressing his views on unutilised funds, he said though donors gave money in the past, we did not have the people to prepare project proposals, which resulted in the money going back to the donors, unutilised. To avoid such a situation in future, the Government should appoint a team to prepare project proposals. The team should be competent and should understand the wants and needs as well as the future requirements of the country. Fernando said that every minister should have an advisory committee of professionals in each area so that project decisions are not taken haphazardly. He said the construction industry anticipated a big boom when peace dawned after 20 years of war in the North and East, but the momentum has not gathered as yet. The major spender on infrastructure projects is the government, but it curtailed expenditure on major construction projects about three years back as it had to spend the major portion of government revenue on the war. Big time investors are yet to arrive in Sri Lanka while Indians are investing in Sri Lanka, mainly because they want to get the benefits of the Free Trade Agreement. |
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