President wants Lankan envoy's official residence restored

Dushy Ranetunge in London

UK: President Mahinda Rajapaksa has issued instructions to restore the Sri Lankan High Commissioner's official residence in London abandoned on grounds of disrepair.

The President who was in London this week, instructed that the High Commissioner's residence in Avenue Road, St John's Wood should be refurbished for the use of Sri Lankan officials who visit London and are put up at the Park Lane Hilton or Dorchester at around pounds 300 (Rs 65,000) per night.

President Rajapaksa had also earlier declined a proposal to dispose of the property. The Sri Lankan High Commissioner's official residence in London is in one of the most sought after areas in St John's Wood, Central London, within a brief walking distance from the Lords Cricket Ground and Regents Park.

This prime property is unique in that it has a substantial outbuilding to the rear of the property which has a separate entrance from a separate road.

It has two separate buildings on one block of land with two separate entrances and is worth more than 10 million pounds (Rs 2.15 billion).

This property is in a sad state and is abandoned by the High Commissioner on the grounds that it needs extensive repairs.

The property has significant subsidence issues as well as damage arising from rising damp and non maintenance of roof and guttering.

The High Commissioner is renting other premises in Brondesbury and now in Finchley, in much less salubrious surroundings in a property that has been described as being suitable for a struggling doctor in London. There have been proposals put forward from London for the High Commission property to be sold and for the acquisition of a new property.

Such a proposal was put forward during the tenure of President Kumaratunga as well and the previous administration in the Foreign Service blocked it after there were reports of parties trying to make commissions out of the sale.

High Commission sources defended it by stating that it was not a sale, but an exchange with another property down the same road.

Most Sri Lankans in the United Kingdom opposed the sale or exchange of this property as once it is sold, it would be impossible to secure another property of a similar kind not only at a similar prestigious location, but also with double entrances with substantive outbuildings.

A few years ago a similar magnificent residence of the Sri Lankan Ambassador in Paris was sold by the then Ambassador and the funds were sent back to Sri Lanka, purportedly to impress President Premadasa, that he was sending funds back home to help the country.

The country was cash strapped at that time, at the height of the second JVP insurrection. After the sale, the Sri Lankan Ambassador to Paris was living in an apartment.

It was this apartment which greeted a later Ambassador Sumithra Pieris, wife of film producer Dr Lester James Pieris, appointed Ambassador to Paris by President Kumaratunga.

During a family get together in Sri Lanka, Pieris informed this writer that when she entered the Ambassador's apartment for the first time, in places where expensive paintings should have hung, there were pictures from rural Sri Lankan calendars stuck to the wall with cooked rice grains used as paste.

She had found it impossible to entertain fellow Ambassadors and High Commissioners in this premises which was worse than a struggling doctor's accommodation in Paris.