The Kandy News Online Edition
March / April 2005
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Kandy Fire Hazards

Sri Lankans do not take fire hazards very seriously mainly because we believe that our houses and buildings are built with material that are generally fire resistant and are mostly stand alone structures. The Kotuwe Kade fire fiasco that we report in this edition of The Kandy News makes us question some of those assumptions especially in relation to a city such as Kandy.

First, we are increasingly using substitutes for traditional building materials, especially for interior finishes and these new materials are more vulnerable to fire. Second, the old single storey buildings are being replaced with large multi-storey buildings often sitting next to each other. Third, Kandy as a World Heritage City is committed to preserving old buildings and artifacts that are irreplaceable. For all these reasons the KMC must take firefighting seriously. But municipal councilors Suminda Wickremasinghe, Ilahi Abdeen and others claim that the Council has failed in this regard.

The Fire Brigade will shortly have a spanking new building on Gopallawa Mawatha. But an efficient fire brigade also needs good equipment, well trained fire fighters and a reliable water supply. If MMC Abdeen's claim that most of the city's sixty fire hydrants do not function is true it is a scandal that indicts the entire city administration. The mayor must fix this problem without delay.

Equipment, men and water apart there is another important policy and regulatory issue to which the council must pay attention. That is improving building codes to reduce fire hazards and better regulation of construction with an eye to minimizing fire hazards. This applies especially to public buildings. A fire in a popular food outlet that led to one death not so long ago was traced to the use of inflammable material for interior décor. It is likely that the Kotuwe Kade fire also was caused by some such lapse. It is the duty of the municipal council to conduct official inquiries to establish the cause of such fires so that we learn lessons from our mistakes and take steps to avoid them in future.

Peradeniya Road Widening Project For What Purpose?

According to a story that we carry in this edition of The Kandy News (Assistance to Preserve Kandy Building Facades Requested from US Foundation) the idea to widen the one mile stretch of Peradeniya Road from Girls' High School to the Police Station is still alive. About five years ago the estimated cost of this project was around Rs 120m including compensation for owners of buildings and businesses that would have to be moved or altered to make way for a wider road. Given inflation the cost would be much higher today.

At that time we strongly objected to this idea on the grounds that the money can be better used if easing traffic congestion on Peradeniya Road is the main goal of the proposed project. One of the objections we raised was that given the total lack of management, or one should say, gross mismanagement of road space in this city, we will be spending a very large sum just to create some additional parking space for vehicles. Gopallawa Mawatha is the best example we can cite. It was supposed to have an uninterrupted traffic flow. Now it is a hopelessly congested bus park and business space for motor repairs and other sundry trades where traffic has to crawl in the rush hours.
The bigwigs of the KMC, UDA, RDA, Police and other such agencies that supposedly “plan” city transport probably have never heard of concepts such as “opportunity cost” and “trade off.” Even if they have not they must at least use their commonsense before rushing into grandiose projects that waste public funds. If they do have Rs 100 million or more to improve Peradeniya Road here is a list of things that they could do to achieve real improvement: bus bays, underpasses near major schools, useable side walks, redesigning and relocating street lights (and phone lines), small parking bays, construction of a couple of small multi-storey car parks in strategic locations, improving the connecting roads between Gopallawa Mawatha and Peradeniya Road, and school relocation. All of these would make a genuine contribution to easing traffic congestion on all four miles of Peradeniya Road. However, if the real purpose of the project is to give “compensation” on inflated claims to building and business owners and take kickbacks the one mile road widening project is a marvelous idea.

Government Takes Series of Progressive Measures
to Boost the Economy

The government in a determined bid to make people prosperous took several major progressive measures recently to boost the economy. One is to halt the reorganization of the CEB. A government spokesperson said that reorganization was totally unnecessary as the CEB was currently spending much more than it earned. As you know the government in its own budget is doing very well spending more than it earned in tax revenue. So we figured that CEB also must be doing well, he noted. He pointed out that the CEB employed a whole lot of people who otherwise would be unemployed. It also sold power to the consumer below the cost of production. Both these policies helped improve social welfare of ordinary people, he argued. The UNP, World Bank and all other reactionary forces were against such progressive policies but we won’t listen to them, he declared defiantly.

Asked about the recent decision to bring back the CTB the spokesman said that that too was a step in the right direction. He reminded that the CTB always had about ten to 15 employees per bus creating a lot of jobs. We promised to create jobs and abolish unemployment and the CTB will help us do that, he claimed.

We also recruited 45,000 graduates to keep that promise. Some people criticize us saying that many of these graduates have no useful work and that they are poorly paid. I want to point out to our critics that the situation of the new graduates is not much different to other government employees who also do not have much work and get a very poor pay. Our government believes in treating everybody equally, he said.

Commenting on the question of sale of one third of the petrol sheds to the Indian company Bharath Petroleum, the spokesperson said that they agreed with the protesting petroleum workers that the sale must not go ahead. Sri Lankan motorist prefer cheap places to fancy places to pump petrol he said. We realized that the Indian Oil Company has wasted money on cleaning up petrol stations and making them look like mini supermarkets. Now ordinary people are scared to go those places. We must keep the remaining petrol stations in the old style to preserve the principle of equity, he said.
Finally, we asked why the government has changed tax rules to make companies reduce advertising. Won’t that go against government’s job creation policy because advertising companies claim that tens of thousands in the industry may lose their jobs? The government spokesperson said that those were jobs that young men and women from elite families in Colombo did. Advertising companies do not take graduates from villages he pointed out. They take OL and AL qualified people from Colombo. If they lose their jobs their parents have enough money to look after them. Moreover, advertising is a wicked capitalist trick to mislead the consumer, he noted. Our consumers will be better off without advertising he concluded. Ravi