Those who had once fooled people with lies such as golden horses and Lamborghinis owned by the Rajapaksas and spread rumours about their non-existing properties and assets now are working hard to make people believe that there is environmental destruction, Chief Government Whip Highways Minister Johnston Fernando said.
Addressing the opening ceremony of the Wari Saubhaagya project with the renovation and dredging of Mahawewa at Pinnapolegama in Nikaweratiya recently, the Minister said the JVP and SJB have their activists and so-called environmentalists working overtime publishing social media posts of a government sponsored forest clearing spree. “Some of them had taken pictures of forests cleared in foreign countries from the internet and edited and put them up on Facebook with captions lamenting of a destruction of the environment and wildlife in Sri Lanka. This shows nothing but their bankruptcy,” he said.
“Soon before the 2015 elections they had some power in such lies and got some people to believe wild allegations such as golden horses and hotels and acres of lands belonging to the Rajapaksas. Some people seemed to have accepted these lies like the Rajapaksas owning hotels, resorts and lands. That would not happen again. If the SJB and JVP liars think that people would fall again for their lies, then they are mistaken.When we built the Lankagama road they clamoured from their rooftops that we were felling trees in rain forests. Then we pointed out that not a single tree was felled in that project. Thereafter there was an uproar calling for a Crudia zeylanica tree stating that it was the one and only such tree in the entire world. That show came to an end when people found that there are many other such trees in this country,” the Minister said.
He said that the incumbent government was formed with the votes of people who had been promised a developed country in return of their votes. “We are bound to develop this country. It is as a part of those development projects we construct roads. According to the SJB and JVP the purpose of constructing roads is not providing people with means of access and of transporting their produce to the market but to cut the trees and damage the environment. We develop this country but not at the cost of losing its environment. Today we started a project to plant 75,000 saplings along the expressways in the country. This is in addition to 100,000 saplings to be planted along the roads coming under the purview of the Ministry of Highways,” the Minister said. He said that time has changed and people’s needs have changed and government has to work in line with aspirations of the people today and not as per the archaic regulations in the gazettes issued in the 1800s. “We have to update ourselves as per the needs of the time we are living in. Provisions of the old gazettes would no longer suit the situation prevailing now.
We must do away with them when those regulations no longer serve the purposes or stand as stumbling blocks on our way to develop this country for the betterment of lives of people.”The Minister said that the Yahapalana government had imposed a Rs 1,000 tax for a cube of crushed metal and stones would be removed soon so that the metal crushers of the quarries in Anuradhapura and Kurunegala districts will benefit.