Former Colombo Municipal Council member Sharmila Gonawela recently said that the JVP owed an explanation regarding its failure to deal with six of its members of the CMC who had been named in an audit report that dealt with corruption in the allocation of vehicle parking areas.

In spite of accusing all other political parties of corruption, waste, irregularities and mismanagement, the JVP hadn’t taken action against those named in the Forensic audit report, Gonawela, who is on the reserved list of Sarvajana Balaya, at the May 06 local government election, told a gathering at Mihindusenpura, in Dematagoda.

Gonawela claimed that she not only sent that report to the then JVP MP Anura Kumara Dissanayake but personally brought the corrupt practices of the JVPers at the council.

The last Local Government poll was conducted on February 10, 2018. The SLPP won that election comfortably.

Referring to the recent threat by President Dissanayake to withhold funds from Local Government bodies that were won by other political parties, Gonawela challenged the JVP to explain its failure to deal with its own corrupt elements.

The JVP-led National People’s Power (NPP) declaration that the CMC could be cleaned up by their victory at the LG polls was nothing but a joke, she said. “Over the years, I have submitted various audit reports and forensic audits to the CIABOC and presidential investigations. Unlike the JVP, I have never waved so-called files on corrupt deals and did nothing about them,” Gonawala said.

Commenting on the major crisis that had been caused by the failure on the part of the government to make proper sanitary arrangements to facilitate the special exposition of the Sacred Tooth relic, Gonawela pointed out that the new administration couldn’t deal with the garbage collected therein over a period of 10 days. In Kandy the boasting NPP government could not tackle approximately 300 metric tons of garbage collected as a result of about 600,000 people visiting Kandy for the special exposition of the Sacred Tooth Relic, she said. So, how could they handle Colombo where about 500,000 people enter every day and the daily collection of garbage is estimated at 400 tonnes?

Gonawela told The Island that she first served the CMC, as a UNPer, in the period 2002-2006. She said: “Of the 53 UNPers in that Council, I was the only female Councillor. The corruption at the CMC at every level shook me. I gave up politics after the end of my term there.”

Declaring that COPA (Committee on Public Accounts) inquired into a spate of complaints she made regarding corrupt practices at the CMC, Gonawala said that she was on the reserve list of the UPFA at the 2018 Local Government polls. “During that term I exposed the fraud in the operation of parking spaces and the Kollupitiya market development project which was nothing but an outright sale.

Gonawela said that her intervention compelled the authorities to halt smart street lights project that would have caused a loss of over 3000 million. In addition to the inquiries that had been conducted by COPA, CIABOC (Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery and Corruption), too ,investigated the corrupt practices that were brought to its attention by me, she said.

The NPP’s deputy mayoral candidate has served the CMC for over 20 years, Gonawela said, asking whether the NPP could honestly claim that it never encouraged corruption at any level.

Gonawela made available a copy of audit query made by the National Audit Office dated April 08, 2022 to The Island that exposed how influential persons exploited the operation of parking spaces for their benefit.

By Shamindra Ferdinando