10th Parliament· 154 sittings on record · 30,475 speeches · latest 10 June 2026

The Hon. (Dr.) Susil Ranasinghe

Jathika Jana balawegaya· Anuradhapura· 3 June 2025 ·Oral question: Oral Question: North-Central Great Canal Project (Q.836/2025)

Public FinanceInfrastructureCorruption & Governance Reform
AI summary generated by gpt-5.5

Hon. (Dr.) Susil Ranasinghe stated that the 28 km tunnel project had faced complications, including an allegedly improper decision to bring in a second tunnel boring machine, which he said may have wasted about USD 50 million. He also referred to a further reported USD 50 million taken for other activities, along with alleged technical and procedural weaknesses. He said technical and financial assessments are being pursued to determine the project’s past and current status before deciding further action.

Verbatim record (translated)

Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English

¶ 01 When we took over, there were many complications. The 28 km tunnel uses a TBM; later it was decided to bring a second machine to expedite work without proper process—this decision has allegedly wasted about USD 50 million. Another USD 50 million has reportedly been taken for other activities. Technical shortcomings and other weaknesses are alleged. Therefore, we are pursuing a technical evaluation report and a financial assessment to establish the status then and now and to proceed accordingly.

Provenance

Source
Hansard, Tuesday, 3 June 2025 ·No. 1750149440002739 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
Page · column
not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
Permalink
/lk/speeches/10044

Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Susil Ranasinghe. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 3 June 2025. No. 1750149440002739. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/10044