Northern Chief Minister replies to Dilan Perera

Northern Province Chief Minister C.V. Wigneswaran has sent the following letter to Deputy Minister Dilan Perera in response to recent public statements made by him. The following is the text of the letter headlined ‘Irresponsible Statement made on the Expenditure of Northern Provincial Council’: This refers to statement which queried what I was going to do with Malaysian Aid when I was unable to spend moneys given by our Central Government.

I was rather surprised when I read the statement which pointed an accusing finger at me without verifying the veracity of the information you received on the funds of the Northern Provincial Council. I have been clarifying such accusations in the Press time and again whenever this sort of statements were made by my political opponents with ulterior motives. This has been made, I suppose deliberately to sling mud on the whole administrative machinery of the NPC and its governing political party in order to mislead and misguide the general public. The idea seems to be your desire to usurp the votes of the Tamils at this critical moment of the forthcoming Local Government elections making out that Tamils cannot govern themselves and indeed it would help them to vote for the majority community led political parties. In order to appraise you with the actual status of the Provincial funds and the delay in releasing the Imprest on time by the Central Government General Treasury even after making frequent urgent requests. I attach hereto the following statement and correspondence the Chief Secretary had with the General Treasury to date: 1. Financial Expenditure Report of NPC – 2015 – 2017. 2. Copy of Chief Secretary’s letter dated 02-12-2017 addressed to Secretary to the Treasury. 3. Copy of Chief Secretary’s letter dated 12-12-2017 addressed to Secretary to the Treasury. Your Hon. would observe from the Financial Expenditure Report as at today and at the tail end of financial year 2017, Rs. 850.12 million imprest is yet to be released from the General Treasury. I would therefore request Your Honour to release another statement rectifying the earlier statement of putting the blame on the Chief Minister. The Provincial Treasury is finding it extremely difficult to pay the bills in hand and as a result of delay in paying part/final payments to the contractors construction works have more or less come to a standstill. I hope your Honour would use Your Hon’s Ministerial position to urge the General Treasury to release the Imprest at once.