24 February 2016 12:00 am
This Betel leaf one is a powerful political character hailing from the South.
He is in charge of a very important Ministry which boasts a large media unit equipped with millions of rupees worth of state of the art accoutrements. Although this unit is meant for covering the official events of the Ministry, it is being deployed to cover such activity as weddings, funerals, Pirith and Dana ceremonies, cricket tournaments, etc. in the electorate of the purohita, they say.
According to ministry employees, millions of public funds are spent a month on the private events and functions being covered by the ministry media unit. The officials compelled to approve the expenditure involved in deploying the media unit for private purposes at the behest of the purohita are said to be in a blue funk that one day their career might end up at Welikada state-run lodge. This illegal activity continuing unchecked could be a time bomb that would blow up in the face of all involved sooner or later, say the Ministry employees.