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| Sunday, 23 May 2004 |
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Roofing sheet racket takes new turn Crime Sunday by Jayampathy Jayasinghe The roofing sheet racket exposed by the media a fortnight ago following the arrest of a former Colombo District Member of Parliament has now taken a different dimension with the recovery of an additional stockpile of sheets at Gallewela and Polonnaruwa areas last week. Colombo Crime Division (CCD) Director, SSP, Sarath Lugoda, said a close associate of a former minister, now a Member of Kotte Municipal Council (MMC) was taken into custody along with a broker and a shopkeeper in this connection. "This was the first occasion where state roofing sheets had been found in outstations," he said. The racket came into light when a multinational company in Sri Lanka called for tenders from local businessmen for the supply and delivery of 3000 steel roofing sheets to its branch offices at Gallewela and Polonnaruwa. The company decided to award the tender worth Rs. 2.5 million to a private company at Abdul Jabbar Mawatha, Colombo 12, for its lowest quotation. Due to insufficient quantities of steel roofing sheets available in their stockpile, the company decided to purchase additional stocks from a trading company based at Horetuduwa, Moratuwa and from two other companies at Abdul Jabbar Mawatha, Colombo 12. In fact, the purchases were made through brokers. But the trouble began when the roofing sheets arrived at its Gallewela and Polonnaruwa factories. The workers who spotted the "Not For Sale" marks on the sheets became suspicious and informed their superiors. The matter was then promptly brought to the notice of their bosses in Colombo who got in touch with the Colombo Crime Division (CCD). SSP, Sarath Lugoda, despatched a team of detectives to Polonnaruwa and Gallewela where they found 3000 roofing sheets. The sheets were then brought back to Colombo and kept in a warehouse under police custody. Meanwhile, the police launched a hunt for the alleged culprits who had sold the sheets and arrests were made. According to detectives, the MMC concerned had sold 1150 roofing sheets to a trading company in Horetuduwa, Moratuwa for a sum of Rs 285,000. They are also probing as to how he came to possess these sheets and whether a politician was involved in the racket. Already, four persons have been taken into custody following the alleged theft of state property. The CCD had earlier launched an investigation into the roofing sheet racket following complaints from several quarters that a quantity of roofing sheets imported under a line of credit from the Indian government had been grossly misappropriated by certain politicians and their henchmen. The previous government had imported 31,000 metric tonnes of roofing sheets through the National Housing Development Authority to be distributed among the poor. The sheets were distributed among Members of Parliament (MPs) Provincial Council Members and the Western Region Development Ministry. Each Member of Parliament (MP) had been allocated 23,360 sheets. Initial investigations revealed that most MPs had allegedly misappropriated the sheets instead of distributing them among low-income groups of people. |
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