Hon. Bimal Rathnayake - Minister of Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation and Leader of the House of Parliament
Hon. Bimal Rathnayake said rural road funding would be detailed during the Ministry debate and addressed the KL-02 road project, stating it was terminated in July 2019 due to poor performance by the contractor joint venture. He said a subsequent Cabinet decision sought to re-award the balance work to the same contractors at updated rates, followed by litigation that delayed the project for five years. He proposed seeking Cabinet approval to use Rs. 400 million recovered through the performance bond to complete the roads, referring underperforming contractors to enforcement authorities, and sending the matter to COPE for examination.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, substantial allocations are provided for rural roads; details will be outlined in the Ministry debate. Specifically on KL-02, termination occurred on 19 July 2019 due to poor performance by Olympus Construction (Pvt.) Ltd. in JV with Rani Construction (Pvt.) Ltd. Subsequently, RDA attempted to proceed for the public’s benefit. However, a Cabinet decision dated 08 August 2019 under the then Minister Mangala Samaraweera sought to award balance works to the same underperforming contractors via local bank financing at updated HS 2019 rates. The contractor then litigated, causing five years of delay, which led to the present hardship.
¶ 02 We can proceed via three avenues: 1) Through your District Development Committee, seek Cabinet approval to reapply the Rs. 400 million obtained via performance bond to finish these roads. 2) Refer underperforming contractors to relevant enforcement authorities. 3) Refer the matter to COPE to examine how projects terminated for poor performance were later proposed for re-award by Cabinet.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Saturday, 22 February 2025 ·No. 1741001658041256 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: Hon. Bimal Rathnayake - Minister of Transport, Highways, Ports and Civil Aviation and Leader of the House of Parliament. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 22 February 2025. No. 1741001658041256. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/24942