The Hon. Shanakiyan Rajaputhiran Rasamanickam

¶ 01 I am winding up, Sir. Just give me only one more minute, please. I will show this map to the Hon. Minister and wind up.

¶ 02 Hon. Minister, as shown on this map, all the lands in front of Shangri-La, Hambantota, are identified. See, these are Hambantota lands. Hon. Namal Rajapaksa, please look into this a bit. The lands in front of Shangri-La, Hambantota, which were given for explorations, are now to be given mining permits. See, these are Tissamaharama lands. These are Thalaimannar lands. Almost all lands in Thalaimannar have been given for explorations and now they are moving to issue mining permits. One person involved in this, Sanjaya Perera, earlier served as Chairman of the GSMB under the Environment Ministry in the previous Government. Now he is the consultant to James Global (Pvt) Ltd. Therefore, it is a conflict of interest. Under this Government, they are trying to issue this permit. If you give all the coastal lands of Sri Lanka to such companies, there will be no land left for tourism. The North and East already have no tourism because you are not developing the airport; you are not establishing the Thalaimannar ferry service; you only talk about land connectivity with India; you are not developing the Trincomalee Harbour. So, there is no way for tourists to come. Now you are also trying to give away the few plots of land where hotels could be built. Then everything will be destroyed.

¶ 03 Finally, I say this: Hon. Minister, I heard you say that by now in this year 500,000 tourists have arrived in Sri Lanka. You calculate that a tourist spends 180 US dollars per day in Sri Lanka. That is from a survey done in 2018. But that is wrong. Therefore, today – after seven years – start a process to calculate the current daily spend of a tourist in Sri Lanka.