UNP says govt. will not solve prevailing shortages but made hash of things by using police, tri forces to raid rice mills, warehouses

By Piyasena Dissanayake

Sending police and tri-forces to raid rice mills and warehouses would not solve the prevailing shortages in the market, UNP Chairman and former Minister Wajira Abeywardena said on Monday.

 Speaking to journalists outside the Chinese Embassy in Colombo, where the UNP Chairman accepted a stock of medical equipment sent by the Chinese government in response to a request by UNP leader Ranil Wickremesinghe, Abeywardena said that such raids could be shown on TV, but would not have helped bring down the prices in the market.

 “In order to control the market prices the government should work in accordance with a national economic plan, developments in the world market and the decisions and actions of the World Food Programme. Without doing so, the government has no way out of this predicament. It would push further the lives of people into the path of suffering. We can see the situation worsening in the coming days. Raiding and sending flying squads to stores of the leading rice millers is not a solution. It is nothing but an eye-catching pseudo-event enacted to show people that the government is doing something.

“The rice millers were created by the government that came to power after 1994. The governments prior to that had the power to control paddy and rice. The amounts of paddy purchased by the rice millers could be found easily without conducting raids on their warehouses. All you have to see is how much money they had borrowed from leading banks for that purpose. A simple calculation of the amounts borrowed and repayments by those businessmen would show you the amounts of paddy purchased and how much they have in stores. We must understand the fact that we need businessmen. Sending police and tri-forces to their homes and business places will only dishearten them,” the UNP Chairman said.