Dec 2 (FT) To boost inflow of workers› remittances via official channels, the Central Bank announced a time-bound incentive scheme offering Rs. 10 per each US dollar remitted and converted. The move was under the prevailing Incentive Scheme on Inward Workers› Remittances launched in December last year. Previously, Rs. 2 per US Dollar was offered and with effect from yesterday incentive was increased by Rs.8 more..

Dec 2 (CT) Following a series of trade union action, CEB Engineers’ Union (CEBEU) warned that they would be compelled to launch a strike, which would result in an islandwide blackout similar to the one that took place in 1996, if their demands, including terminating the Yugadanavi Power Plant deal are not met. CEBEU Chairman, Saumya Kumarawadu, said the CEB management, led by the Chairman and General Manager, have changed the CEB senior management staff who were serving in crucial more..

Dec 2 (EN) SL Finance Minister Basil Rajapaksa on Wednesday met his Indian counterpart Nirmala Sitharaman in New Delhi discussed steps to deepen economic cooperation with India amid expectations of support for the country’s foreign exchange crisis. Rajapaksa’s visit comes as Sri Lanka’s foreign reserves have fallen to low levels and liquidity injections to maintain 6% policy were pushing up imports above dollar receipts raising doubts over the ability to make debt repayments. more..

Dec 2 (TM) The Ceylon Electricity Board Engineers’ Union (CEBEU) said that they would escalate their ongoing work-to-rule trade union (TU) action against the Yugadanavi deal from today (2), where they will not address emergency power restoration activities which fall outside their eight hours of work. “We were on a work-to-rule trade union action as we wanted our demands about this illegal New Fortress Energy Inc. deal met. more..

Dec 2 (FT) SL’s COVID-19 detections rose to 564,733 with 744 persons testing positive for COVID-19 yesterday. The patients detected yesterday include 559 persons from the New Year cluster and the Health Promotion Bureau states that 8,815 PCR tests were conducted. The previous day, 719 persons from the New Year cluster and three SL overseas returnees tested positive for COVID-19. The Health Promotion Bureau states that 6,615 PCR tests and 3,100 rapid antigen tests more..

Dec 2 (CT) Parliamentarians should be allowed to enrol in the Sri Lanka Law College or any other university to further their studies, Chief Opposition Whip Lakshman Kiriella said. Participating in the Committee Stage Debate on Expenditure Heads of the Education Ministry, Kiriella said a debate is taking place in society about the education levels of MPs. “There was a programme like that in the 1970s. Under that, some MPs enrolled at the Law College without sitting for the entrance exam. more..

Dec 2 (AD) Bank accounts of those who distribute and receive money through unlawful money transfer methods will be frozen with immediate effect, Governor of CB Ajith Nivard Cabraal said in a tweet today. Accordingly, the CB has urged all migrant Sri Lankans to use only legal channels to repatriate their earnings. Earlier today, it was announced that SL migrant workers would receive an additional Rs.10 for each USD more..

Dec 2 (DM) National Council for Road Safety has decided to increase the payment of compensation for the dependents of victims of serious injuries, Minister Pavithra Wanniarachchi said. She said the payment of compensation for victims of accidents caused by unidentified vehicles has increased from Rs. 200,000 to Rs. 250,000 and for seriously injured victims from Rs. 100,000 to Rs. 150,000. Following the instructions of the Minister, this new compensation scheme will be implemented more..

Dec 2 (Island) More than 150 Colombo City-based members of the CEB Engineers’ Union (CEBEU) yesterday surrounded the CEB General Manager at its headquarters in Fort in protest against the Board’s decision to send AGM Transmission Janaka Aluthge on compulsory leave. General Manager M.R. Ranatunga was not available for comment following the noisy protest. A senior CEBEU member told The Island that they would not take the matter lightly. The irate union member alleged that more..

Dec 2 (Island) Sri Lanka made a huge splash at the 26th World Route Development Forum (World Routes 2021), which took place in Milan, Italy, recently. By making its presence felt at the forum, Sri Lanka pitched its destination for global airlines to consider it as one of the top holiday destinations for the upcoming winter season and beyond. Sri Lanka Tourism officials were able to directly engage with decision-makers from the global route development community, including world’s air services, more..

Dec 2 (DN) Foreign Minister G.L. Peiris said that the government will expedite the distribution of 500 houses built by Saudi Arabia for tsunami victims in 2004 in Noriccholai in the Akkarapattu Division in the Eastern Province. The Saudi Charity Fund, through the United Nations built 500 houses for tsunami victims in 2004 at a cost of US$ 10 million. The whole complex with a playground, community centre, mosque and shopping mall has been abandoned due to some disputes. more..

Dec 2 (TM) Lanka Private Bus Owners’ Association (LPBOA) has filed a police complaint, alleging that the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) has resorted to importing cheaper, low-quality fuel, due to the existing foreign currency shortage in the country, resulting in their buses suffering breakdowns. LPBOA President Gemunu Wijeratne claimed that he had filed a complaint with the IGP that over the past two to three weeks, more..

Dec 2 (FT) COVID-19 vaccines were administered to 72,003 persons on Tuesday, with 74.1% of the total population now having received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine to date. 2nd dose of a COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to 63.94% of the population. In total, first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine has been administered to 15,932,194 persons and 13,749,891 persons have received the second dose as well. The third dose has been administered to 656,942 persons, more..

Dec 2 (FT) Aitken Spence Travels, the leading destination management company (DMC) in SL working in partnership with TUI Kazakhstan, welcomed its first flight for the winter season from Kazakhstan yesterday. Air Astana, the flag carrier of Kazakhstan, will be operating three flights per week every Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday and has a capacity of 160 passengers. The flights will continue until April 2022. All travellers booked through Aitken Spence Travels are fully-vaccinated more..

Dec 2 (TM) Amidst a spate of gas cylinder-based explosions around the country over the past few weeks, energy experts have requested the Govt and the relevant authorities to ensure that the durability of all accessories attached to a gas cylinder are strengthened relative to any change in gas composition, in order to prevent such explosions. “Experts and all others have stated that the gas cylinders do not explode, but more..

Dec 2 (DN) Former SL captain Angelo Mathews is likely to be ruled out of the upcoming Lanka Premier League (LPL) 2021 cricket tournament due to the thigh strain he sustained in the ongoing 2nd Test against the West Indies. SL Cricket Medical Committee Head Professor Arjuna de Silva has confirmed Mathews will most probably be ruled out of the LPL tournament since this type of injury requires 4-6 week of rehabilitation. He said Mathews has suffered a grade 2 hamstring tear. more..

Dec 2 (ST) Sri Lanka’s only Asian Games medal winner in karate, R.J. Edwards strongly believes that funds granted by the Ministry of Sports on the development of athletes and coaches through the High Performance Programme, should transmit properly, if benefits are to be reaped. The 47-year-old head coach of national team, is adamant that the Karate Federation of Sri Lanka should manage funds only for the development of athletes and coaches and make them professional. more..

Dec 2 (FT) The Port City Colombo Marina welcomed MY Kalizma – the classic superyacht once owned by Hollywood screen idols Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The first superyacht to sail into the Port City Colombo Marina, established Colombo as a calling port in the Indian Ocean with facilities for berthing luxury superyachts. Pierre Pringiers, Chairman of the Sail Lanka Yachting Group which manages the Port City Colombo Marina said, “The 145’ Kalizma – built in 1906 by G.L. Watson in Scotland – more..

Dec 2 (Island) Royal College player Thehan Wijemanne clinched the men’s open singles title of the 106th Colombo Championships as he beat Chathurya Nilaweera in the final played at the SL Tennis Association courts on Wednesday. Wijemanne who partners Nilaweera in the men’s open doubles was tied 1-1 in the singles final before pulling off a 10-7 win to seal his victory. The final scores read 6-4, 4-6, 10-7. The Royalist beat Kiran Vairavanathan and Archana Lokuge in a row more..

Dec 2 (CI) Seven bowling innings, 21 Test wickets, and on a day in which the left-arm spinners went missing in stretches, an outstanding 6 for 70, which brings the average down to 23.52. If you'd followed Ramesh Mendis at first-class level or in the SL A side, you might have thought - oh, here's a decent batting allrounder who can do the job with the ball. But SL has a knack of finding spinners in unusual places (though, to be fair it must more..

Dec 2 (Island) SL’s win in the first match of the ICC Men’s Test Championship has put the team on top of the table powered by MRF (on percentage points), and several players including skipper Dimuth Karunaratne have improved their rankings after the first Test in Galle. Captain Karunaratne’s Player of the Match effort of 147 and 83 has lifted him four places to seventh, just one below his career-best sixth position attained in Aug 2019. Former captains Angelo Mathews (up 2 places to 23rd) more..

Dec 2 (CT) Countries with greater economic freedom exhibit better performance, Sirimal Abeyratne, Professor in Economics and Head of the Department of Economics at the Colombo University, stated in a booklet titled Economic Freedom of Sri Lanka: Twists and Turns. Sri Lanka, which has scored 6.88 for its Economic Freedom Index in 2018, is ranked 83rd position out of 162 countries. Thus, it is a moderately free economy in the world as per our country classification. more..

Dec 2 (DN) The export community and the Chambers hailed the move by the govt to bring in a bill to legalise the export of medical cannabis. This bill will be presented in Parliament in 3 months, State Minister Sisira Jayakody told Parliament. Former Chairman EDB and Former Chairman SL Tourism Promotions Bureau (SLTPB) Dr. Rohantha Athukorala said, “given the foreign currency challenge, we as a country must more..

Dec 2 (GV) World AIDS Day is an annual event commemorated worldwide since 1988 on December 1. It is an opportunity to refocus and reinforce the global efforts to prevent new HIV infections, increase HIV awareness and knowledge and support those living with HIV. This year, the theme of World AIDS Day is the urgent need to end the inequalities that drive AIDS and other pandemics around the world. “Without bold action against inequalities, the world risks missing targets to end AIDS by 2030, more..

Dec 2 (Island) Why is it that only the Opposition politicians have brainwaves? Exceptional abilities are said to emerge in some ordinary people after brain injury or disease. We reported a few years ago that an American youth who dropped out of college as he was extremely weak in mathematics had become a brilliant mathematician all of a sudden after being hit in the head by a flying bottle in a pub. (Commenting on the incident, we warned the SL youth that suffering head injuries in pub more..

Dec 2 (Island) My mother told me, decades later, that she was sure Sirisena Cooray knew I was under 18 when he let me slip into the cinema in my long-trousers for the 9:30pm show for movies that were ‘adults only’, having conspired with my father. She remembered Mr. Cooray laconically saying wait till the lights go off. What surprised me was that my mother, too, had spotted our scam. Sirisena Cooray was the manager at Ceylon Theaters, which was the role in which Killi Rajamahendran became more..

Dec 2 (GV) Why do SL voters elect and re-elect corrupt and discredited politicians? This topic has been much talked about and commented on in newspapers and social media ever since Gotabaya Rajapaksa, in a rare moment of self-realisation, asked this question from the voters of SL. Why indeed? Two years before the president posed this question in Nov 2019, I asked myself the very same question when to my disbelief and dismay, 6.9 million voters elected Gotabaya Rajapaksa more..

Dec 2 (CT) There is no doubt as to where certain Muslim communities in SL, such as the Malays, Bohras, Memons and Pathans, came from. But theories on the origin of SL or Ceylon Moors, who are the majority among Muslims in the island, are both varied. Today, the Ceylon Moors emphatically claim that they are of Arab origin. But SL scholar Ameer Ali says that they are of mixed origin in his paper in Asian Studies entitled: more..

Dec 2 (TM) One thing Sri Lankans always advocate but rarely do is putting themselves in the shoes of another. We do it only when it resonates with what we always believed in, and there is hardly any room for a change of attitudes. The same was observed during the past few years when a spate of deaths of suspects or accused implicated in organised criminal activities who were killed in crossfire during attempts by the Police to find hidden weapons and raids, which the people thought was justifiable, more..

Dec 2 (CT) The main pivot to uplift a country’s real growth that spawns employment and doesn’t overburden its debt profile is investor confidence. If that confidence is lacking, a low interest rate regime in place by chance or by design is not going to uplift real growth. Last month, inflation hit a 154 month high of 9.9%. Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL), whilst acknowledging and further forecasting such inflationary developments, attributed those to supply side effects (Friday’s CT). more..

Dec 2 (DM) Just when world economies were recovering from various variants of COVID-19 the WHO recently announced the spread of a new COVID variant, Omicron. Even though research studies are still at a preliminary stage, health researchers warn that this variant could be far more transmissible and lethal than other variants including Delta. However, several MPs recently expressed their views regarding the new variant and more..

Dec 2 (DM) The above captioned article appearing in your issue of 29th November, by popular journalist K.K.S. Perera, cannot be taken lying down by most of the voters when he says “The voters are to be blamed, because they keep voting for the same vulgar MPs who misbehaved or robbed our money at every previous parliament; just because they assert to fight for their class, race, caste or religion” also “Our legislature is in a mess because of the rogues, thugs and hooligans sent by voters more..

Dec 2 (DM) The series of gas-cylinder related explosions, more than 30 in November alone reported from several parts of SL, is a matter of grave concern causing much fear and trepidation among the millions of domestic-gas users across the country. It is even more alarming, considering the fact, that little or nothing is known about the exact causes leading to these explosions in which one life was lost and several homes and restaurants were severely damaged. more..