The Hon. (Dr.) Hiniduma Sunil Senevi - Minister of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs
The Minister stated that the Shakya Kingdom reconstruction project, for which a foundation stone was laid in January 2017, used no government funds, with only land provided by the Ministry under an MoU with the Light of Asia Foundation. He said the Foundation failed to complete the work within the agreed three years, achieving only about 5 per cent progress, leading to cancellation of the MoU and suspension of the project. He added that about 5 acres, including existing constructions and adjacent land, are to be regularized for a proposed International Multicultural Centre, and that a Cabinet Memorandum has been submitted.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, the answers are as follows:
¶ 02 (a) (i) Yes.
¶ 03 (ii) The foundation stone for the project to reconstruct the Shakya Kingdom on that land was laid under the patronage of the then President in January 2017.
¶ 04 (iii) Yes.
¶ 05 (b) (i) No government funds were spent for this project; only the land was provided by the Ministry of Buddhasasana. According to an MoU signed with the Light of Asia Foundation, funding and overall construction were to be undertaken by the Foundation.
¶ 06 (ii) As per the MoU, the Foundation failed to complete construction within three years (with progress only about 5% in that period). Therefore, the MoU was cancelled and the project has been halted. It is planned to regularize approximately 5 acres including the constructions and the adjacent land parcels, and thereafter to proceed with establishing an International Multicultural Centre as requested. A Cabinet Memorandum has been submitted to proceed.
¶ 07 (c) Not applicable.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 4 March 2025 ·No. 1742359468086980 ·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/10215
Cite as: The Hon. (Dr.) Hiniduma Sunil Senevi - Minister of Buddhasasana, Religious and Cultural Affairs. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 4 March 2025. No. 1742359468086980. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/10215