News
Speaker accused of being notorious for suspending Standing Orders
Chief Opposition Whip and Kandy District MP Lakshman Kiriella last Wednesday accused Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena of being notorious for suspending Standing Orders of the House.He said so when the Opposition MPs opposed taking up the new Inland Revenue (Amendment) Bill for debate in Parliament without going through the relevant consultative committee stages.
Kiriella said that the bill has to go to either the Committee on Public Finance (COPF) or an advisory committee prior to being taken up in parliament.
“This we have agreed at party leaders’ meeting that every bill before their taking up for debate should go through these consultative committees and detailed reports and their data discussed at those committee meetings should be made available to the MPs. How could the MPs debate without relevant data?” Kiriella queried from the Speaker and said that the latter was known for suspending the Standing Orders to run the House.
“You have not given the COPF chairman post due to the Opposition for two years. If we had that post we would have easily predicted and prevented the present economic crisis. Had we got the chairmanship of COPF in 2020, we could have told the country of the imminent collapse of the economy. You suspended the Standing Orders and prevented us from getting the COPF chairman post for an opposition MP,” Kiriella told the Speaker.
Speaker Abeywardena: What is the point of now talking about that? There is no use of talking of something that would have happened if something else happened early. We must move ahead without wasting the time for such talks. There has been a mistake here.
Leader of the House Education Minister Susil Premajayantha: When a bill is submitted to the House anyone with any problem could go before the Supreme Court. Now the Supreme Court has given its determination. As per the normal procedure, the bill should have been gone before the COPF. But party leaders met yesterday to take this bill for debate. The COPF should have taken the bill for its scrutiny this morning. The COPF can do that now and we can take the debate after that.
Speaker Abeywardena asked COPF chairman Dr. Harsha de Silva whether he could hold a meeting yesterday itself and then the bill could be taken up for debate at 4.30 pm on the same day.
Dr. De Silva said that the time was not sufficient to do the committee’s work. “We have not discussed this bill in the committee. We need time to see the content of this Bill.”
Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa said that the COPF is not a rubber stamp of government businesses.
President Ranil Wickremesinghe who is also the Minister of Finance said that he did not send the bill to the advisory committee. “You have two choices. You can take up the bill for the debate today or on Saturday. The COPF chairman wanted to discuss it. I told my secretary to furnish the COPF with necessary information, and advised the COPF to be liable to any leaks of sensitive information,” the President, adding that the bill has to be passed by this Sunday.
An Australian woman has given birth to rare, naturally-conceived identical quadruplets after a pregnancy described as “extremely high risk” by the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital.
The four girls, who were delivered via caesarean section at 28 weeks and four days on 14 July, were monozygotic quadruplets – where a single fertilised egg splits into four embryos.
The hospital said the girls’ mother, 34-year-old Jenitar Na’amoana, and her husband Jortham, already had four children and were taken by “immense surprise” when told to expect quadruplets.
Dr Alexa Bendall, who cared for the mother from the start of her pregnancy, estimated identical quadruplets occur “at one in every 15 million pregnancies” and said “but to share the same placenta – this is unheard of”.
Bendall, who is a maternal foetal medicine specialist and obstetrician, said such a pregnancy was very high-risk, with the hospital admitting Na’amoana as an inpatient at 25 weeks so she could be monitored.
“We always said that if we could get her to 28 weeks, we would be doing well,” Bendall said.
“So the fact that we’ve got four beautiful, healthy babies born at 28 weeks and four days is incredible and we’re very happy to be a part of it,” she added.
“Jenitar has taken everything in her stride from day one… she has somehow dodged every complication and risk for both herself and her babies,” Bendall said.
The newborn girls have been named Emily, Harriet, Catherine, and also Alexa, after Alexa Bendall, who described it as “a beautiful tribute”.
The babies will stay in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit until they grow to full term and are “currently doing extremely well”, Bendall added.
The parents’ other children are between one and 10 years old and the mother has recently launched an online fundraising campaign to help buy a van with at least 10 seats.
In a message alongside the fundraiser, which has already received over A$37,000 (£19,261) in donations, Na’amoana wrote: “Our four precious miracles have arrived safely, and while our hearts are overflowing with gratitude, the reality of caring for four newborns at once has brought challenges we never could have imagined.”
Naturally conceived quadruplets are extremely rare, with doctors estimating the odds at about one in 700,000 births.
(BBC)
… bribe giver departs Colombo port
The Merchant Shipping Secretariat (MSS) is investigating a complaint received from the Captain of an Indonesian flagged vessel Sensho that he had to pay an official USD 5,000 bribe to facilitate what our sources called port state control inspection.
Sources said that the cement carrier arrived at the Colombo Port, on Friday, and departed after having passed the rigorous inspection. Responding to queries, sources said that after paying the bribe, the vessel’s Captain has lodged complaints with MSS and the Commission to Investigate Allegation of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC).
In spite of the government’s high profile anti-corruption drive there seemed to be fresh cases, sources said, adding that MSS had received a comprehensive complaint. The vessel had departed Colombo for Jeddah, sources said.
“The issue at hand is whether there have been unreported cases of MSS personnel receiving bribes,” sources said, acknowledging that the Captain, instead of immediately bringing the demand for USD 5,000 bribe to the MSS, had paid it and departed Colombo. (SF)
An opposition political group, styled as Dinana Dakuna, has accused the Committee of Public Finance (COPF) of protecting the masterminds behind the USD 2.5 mn theft from the Treasury.
Commenting on the recent COPF report on the theft, the group has alleged that the all-party parliamentary grouping made an attempt to shift the blame to the Central Bank as part of a cover-up. It has described the COPF report as a deliberate attempt to suppress the truth.
The group said that the COPF conveniently asserted that the theft took place due to the inexperience of officers concerned, thereby diverting the attention from those who perpetrated it.
An alleged attempt to portray the collapse of the administrative set-up that led to the USD 2.5 mn theft as a human resource problem, has also been questioned by Dinana Dakuna.
Rare identical quadruplets born in Australia
Showers will occur in the Western, Sabaragamuwa and North-western provinces and in Kandy, Nuwara-Eliya, Galle and Matara districts
Merchant Shipping Secretariat probes bribery scandal
Theft of USD 2.5 mn: Dinana Dakuna claims COPF trying to protect mastermind
COPF chief slams security sticker scam
CAA urged to protect soap users
‘Dates have the highest sugar content to fight Coronavirus’
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