MEETOTAMULLA CARNAGE AND ELECTRICITY FROM GARBAGE
While in parliament debates on the carnage at Meetotamulla, where our parliamentarians will accuse one another, exposing their own sins in wasteful expenditure on unwanted projects such as the Mattala Airport, International stadium at Tanamalwila, all undertaken on huge foreign loans, and not addressing their minds to matters of national importance, the Chairman Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) Engineers Union Athula Wanniarachchi in a recent news report says, “The projects initiated to generate electricity from garbage were unsuccessful due to the high cost of production and the difficulty in producing electricity from garbage with the huge humidity of the garbage available”.
It also states ‘CEB had agreed to purchase a unit of electricity produced from garbage for Rs.23.10 against the price of Rs.35.00 set by producers. This statement from CEB is acceptable as it is a commercial establishment, but on national interest, the government and the Colombo Municipal Council should have worked out a mechanism to meet the balance with the four entrepreneurs which the authorities appear to have failed. On the aforesaid statement of the Chairman CEB Engineers Union on the pricing, I scanned the internet where it says as reported in an English Weekly of April 10, 2016 captioned ‘CEB GENERATES INTO BUYING PRIVATE POWER’ Director Development of the Ministry for Power and Renewable Energy Sulakshana Jayawardena, under this scheme suppliers will be paid Rs.31.85 for every unit of electricity generated to the national grid. The payment will be subjected to generation of electricity during two specific periods 6.30 p.m. to 10.30 p.m. It will be seen the price offered to those entrepreneurs who were prepared to undertake power generation using garbage and the private suppliers with diesel plants seems to be almost same, but why has the CEB offered a lesser rate of Rs.23.10 for garbage produced electricity.
The other damning statement made by the Chairman CEB Engineers Union Athula Wanniarachchi is the difficulty in obtaining necessary Licenses for these projects. It will be interesting to know who was responsible to issue licenses and why it was not done. The answer is obvious.
G. A. D. Sirimal - BORALESGAMUWA
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