Dear All,
In Sri Lanka, over last 45 years from 1977, we saw a huge deal of
corruption.
Before 1977, even to construct a culvert on a C class road, the permission
of Department of National Planning was needed.
After 1977, we saw various commissions and authorities being set up (Greater
Colombo Economic Commission, Urban Development Authority, Road Development
Authority, etc.)
However, for procurement, still all institutions had to follow the national
procurement guidelines through a tendering process
However, after 2005 and specially after 2010, we saw many negotiated
contracts and unsolicited projects almost fully bypassing the national
procurement guidelines coming down as cabinet decisions.
From early 2020, we saw 100000 km project and 12000 bridges in rural areas
project.
Majority of these contracts were awarded without calling for tenders using a
negotiated process (generally a payment of 10% being the default for the
relevant parties)
No due diligence was conducted to check the need for individual projects
under Jonny via Mr 10%.
This is a true story disclosed by one of my students who was incharge of
several rural bridges as a Civil Engineer.
At one site, when you cross the bridge, you can enter only a paddy field,
but not a connecting road.
So, the young engineervwrote to RDA questioning. He was told to go ahead
since a bridge at that location was requested by the local member of
parliament (from the ruling party).
The engineer allowed the contractor to go ahead and complete the two mass
concrete abutments.
One day, Prof Ranjith Dissanayake, current President Elect of IESL came for
an inspection tour as the Secretary of Ministry dealing with rural bridges.
He asked from the officials present the reason for a bridge at that
location.
All officials kept their silence.
Not receiving a logical answer, Prof Ranjith ordered the bridge construction
to be stopped immediately.
This is how things happened since 2020 in the projects master minded by Mr
10% (some said that he had a brain equivalent to 7 brains).
No wonder that today we have become a bankrupt third world developing nation
rapidly falling from an upper middle income country in 2016 to a lower
middle income (might be ranked poor shortly).
Prof Thishan Jayasinghe
Senior Professor
Department of Civil Engineering
University of Moratuwa
