The outlay on the construction of the railway extension to Kataragama from Matara estimated by a team of engineers has subsequently been highly bloated. This is a finding by the new Ministerial one presiding over Transport, they say.
The Ministerial one disclosed his findings to the mass media recently.
It was the former strongman himself who handled the Highway portfolio in the previous administration and he was directly responsible for all preliminaries relating to the proposed Matara – Hambantota rail line, which was incidentally a pet project of his. So it was obvious that he was the target of the barbed comment of the Ministerial one, but he is answerable for the implied arbitrary upward revision of the initial project estimate.
On hearing that the new Ministerial one’s finding had placed the former strongman in a tight spot, several politicos close to the latter had called him to make solicitous inquiries. The former strongman had a ready answer to these callers: “I hope to give this fellow an earful when I meet him next time. Some people don’t know that when they point one finger at another person, three fingers would invariably point at themselves!”
Two or three days later, both the former strongman and the new Ministerial one holding the Transport portfolio attended a function held to felicitate the old boys of two leading Colombo schools on their being elected to Diyawanna, some of them raised to Ministerial rank.
On seeing the former strongman arriving for the function, the Ministerial one quietly slipped out, they say.
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