Unprotected rail crossings consume more lives – UNP

While burning issues such as unprotected railway crossings were consuming lives by the day, the government had generated a debate on the proposed dilution of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, with a view to diverting attention from matters that concerned the security and economic wellbeing of the masses, the UNP said yesterday.

The party’s media spokesman, Gayantha Karunathillaka MP, addressing a news conference in Colombo, said that there were 775 unprotected railway crossings in the country which had resulted in the loss of many lives, but the Rajapaksa regime was busy organising car races, propaganda shows such as the ‘Deyata Kirula’ and purchasing bad petrol and diesel from suppliers who had been blacklisted many times over.

All unprotected railway crossings were a deathtrap and should be secured without any further delay, he noted while calling on the government to stop the globe trotting circus and divert such monies to ensure the security of the people who were already reeling under the spiraling cost of living.

The loss from the infamous oil hedging deal had cost the country millions of dollars. The Ceylon Petroleum Corporation which was already running huge overdrafts had reacted by jacking up the price of even diesel and kerosene which was the common man’s fuel, the MP observed.

He said that fishermen and farmers were promised diesel and fertilizer subsidies, but the opposite had happened with the prices of fuel and a bag of fertlizer being jacked up beyond their reach.

The Fisheries Minister Mahindananda Amaraweera had threatened to resign over the recent deaths of 60 fishermen who lost their lives at sea due to the authorities failing to issue timely warnings, but was still in office, while the Commission of Inquiry was yet to release its report, which going by past experience would never see the light of day, Karunathillake noted.