Hon. Rohana Bandara
Hon. Rohana Bandara argued that SriLankan Airlines was profitable under its Emirates partnership but incurred major losses after being brought fully under State control, despite having around 6,000 employees and 19 aircraft. He raised concerns about delays, cancellations and safety issues affecting expatriate demand for direct flights, and asked whether the Government would act on the J.C. Weliamuna Committee’s findings by prosecuting wrongdoing and recovering losses to the State.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Deputy Minister, during the period SriLankan partnered with Emirates, it made profits. After Mahinda Rajapaksa came to power and brought the airline fully under Sri Lanka, losses mounted. Today there are some 6,000 employees and 19 aircraft. Many expatriate Sri Lankans want direct flights on SriLankan, but delays, cancellations and safety concerns deter them. The Yahapalana Government appointed the J.C. Weliamuna Committee to probe fraud at SriLankan, but those efforts stalled later. Will you proceed, punish those responsible and recover losses to the State?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 25 February 2025 ·No. 1741258607035810 ·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.
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/lk/speeches/26567
Cite as: Hon. Rohana Bandara. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 25 February 2025. No. 1741258607035810. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/26567