By Saman Indrajith

Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa yesterday told parliament that there were serious issues pertaining to the allocation of stalls in the new Manning Market at Peliyagoda. There had been instances of a single shop being given to two traders.

Taking special permission from the Chair, the Opposition Leader said: “When it was planned to construct the new Manning Market at a cost of Rs 6.9 billion we provided a list of all the rightful owners of the old Manning Market. There were 1,192 of them. We promised to lease the shops at the market for a monthly rental of Rs 2,000-3,000 and did not intend to ask the shop owners to place any deposit. The new government completed the construction work and we are told that the traders have been asked to deposit Rs 200,000 to 500,000 per stall. In addition they have been informed that they would be required to pay a monthly rental of Rs 15,000. This is unfair.”

Premadasa said that those traders had found that the same space had been allocated to two people in some cases. “How are you going to lease the same space to two persons simultaneously? The original list of 1,192 traders registered in 2017 had the names of those who had stalls at the old Manning Market. We included the names of all traders who had been there. So, the new list must be having the names of some outsiders.”

He requested the government to stick to the original list of names and to lease a stall at a monthly rental of Rs. 3,000.