Budget has broken PM’s election pledge: Gammanpila

23 November 2015 06:20 pm

The government’s decision to increase prices of vehicles through the budget-2016 has blatantly violated Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s election promise to provide one vehicle for each middle class family, Pivithuru Hela Urumaya (PHU) General Secretary Udaya Gammanpila charged today.

He said some vehicle prices would be increased by Rs. 400,000 while some would be increased by Rs. 7 million.

“The Prime Minister in his election manifesto, pledged to make provisions to provide at least one vehicle for each middle class family. However, through the budget, the government had today increased the prices of vehicles by hundred thousands of rupees. The election promise given previously has become another broken promise,” Mr. Gammanpila told a news conference.

He said the argument of the government to increase vehicle prices was the increasing city traffic and limited road capacity. “Didn’t they know these facts when giving promises to the people during the election campaign?” he asked.

He said the previous government of President Mahinda Rajapaksa had not even touched the prices of environment friendly vehicles such as electric vehicles but the present government had not even spared the prices of those vehicles. 
 
“We will call for a black flag day against this injustice towards the people. We request people to tie a black flag to their vehicles in protest over this unreasonable vehicle price increase,” he said. (Lahiru Pothmulla)