Friday, 9 May 2014 03:05
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By Ashwin HemmathagamaOur Lobby Correspondent
Stealing baby elephants, clearing wildlife zones, unauthorised settlements and the problems in the Zoological Gardens shook Parliament yesterday.
Moving the adjournment debate, Opposition lawmaker Anura Kumara Dissanayake blamed the Government and the respective departments for being powerlessness to bring the culprits to book.
Drawing Parliament’s attention to expedited action to prevent a serious of violations of environmental laws, MP Dissanayake said: “For the first time in the history, your Government appointed three different Ministers for environment, Zoological Gardens and wildlife. This is absurd. Previously all these topics were centralised and effective under one minister. After the colonial regime you are continuing to destroy the central hills. There is a hotel complex and golf ground constructed in Haldummulla area. You are planning to widen the road and develop the roadside from Hatton to Adam’s Peak by acquiring 30 metres. The Cabinet paper was presented on 5 March this year approving the involvement of the UDA and the allocation of land. Horton Plains is now exploited for illegal gem mining, in which the Minister is not involved.”
“Dumbara Hills is the feeding area for our main rivers. But in Dumbara area there is an unauthorised cardamom cultivation spread over almost in 600 acres. This leads to soil erosion. In addition there are 23 hotels constructed in Dumbara Valley receiving blessings from a top Air Force official in Sri Lanka. This is how the central hills are getting destroyed. Wilpattu North is also getting destroyed. Over 500 acres of forest has been cleared and buildings constructed. The Ministry took four persons into custody. That is all you could do. Minister Bathiudeen has no right to distribute lands. The people in Kalpitiya are taken there to increase the voter base. This leads to communal hatred and religious issues,” revealed MP Dissanayake.
Exposing the racket on baby elephants and the involvement of Government officials to prepare illegal documents and approvals, MP Dissanayake said: “An average elephant was sold for over Rs. 11,500,000 in 2012. The high price received led to this racket. Today an elephant is valued at Rs. 20,000,000. An elephant is hired for tourism at Kandalama Hotel for a monthly payment of Rs. 100,000. The elephant as well as the mahout are given food from hotel. See what happened in Udawalawa. The Police couldn’t do anything but return the camera that captured the vehicles involved in this robbery, but without the particular pictures. You couldn’t take any action against those who were involved in this theft carried out with the involvement of this Government. During the recent past, 63 baby elephants were captured from Habarana forest.”
In response Minister of Wildlife Resources Conservation Gamini Wijitha Wijayamuni Zoysa stated that all possible measures had been taken using the 1,200 staffers of the department. Moving on to the Zoological Gardens, MP Dissanayake said that the Dehiwala Zoo was nothing more than a slaughter house. “Valuable animals die bitten by dogs, of broken legs and due to ill-treatment. There were only eight barking deer in the zoo. From this, six were taken for the CHOGM zoo and all died due to dog attacks,” he exposed, giving a long list of animals that had died in the zoo during the recent past.
