6 February 2018 09:50 am Views - 2503
There was a move to relocate a government school in an area represented by a leading politico.
The traders in the locality who took the lead to protest against the move held a picket demanding that the school be shifted to a block of land belonging to the Mahaveli Authority situated in close proximity to its present site.
The provincial governor who later visited the proposed block of land approved its transfer for relocating the school and instructed that it be bounded by a barbwire fence.
The traders happy that they won their demand cried ‘hurrah’ and set about putting up the boundary fence around the piece of land allotted for the school. However, a team of Policemen who arrived at the scene told the men busy putting up the fence that they were committing an offense. “The governor has transferred this land for relocating our village school and we are putting up the fence on his instructions,” they told the Policemen. Police told them that the governor has no powers to allocate state land to anybody and proceeded to dismantle the fence the traders had put up.
The traders had later made representations to the governor about the Police action. However, he had admitted that he had no powers to distribute lands and he could do nothing about it. And they were back to square one!