People decry waste of public funds

The preparations, now underway to re-carpet the road leading to the Diyawanna ‘palace’, have raised many an eyebrow, they say.

Many people in the area wonder why the authorities concerned are in a mighty hurry to break up this road which is in good condition for re-carpeting. They say that it is a crime to spend public funds on the Diyawanna access road which requires no repairs or improvement when there is a crying need to build new roads in the country’s backwoods where a sizable segment of the population has no access to a road for a mile or two from their homes. “There are many villages in our country which are not accessible by a motor vehicle. It is a big problem for these villagers to take a bad patient to hospital in an emergency. But the authorities are more concerned about mollycoddling the ‘haves’ like the ‘225 visitors to the Diyawanna palace’,” they say.