Indian government’s help to disintegrate Tamil homeland
Indian government on Wednesday announced a railbus project costing about 66 million SL Rupees to “provide a quick and affordable avenue of transport between Batticaloa and Trincomalee”.
But under this project the communication between two traditional Tamil cities will be developed in such a way that they will be will be effectively linked to the Sinhala districts instead of linking each other.
The Railway track between the cities of Batticaloa and Trincomalee, shown in red, runs through Sinhala districts
Full text of the statement issued to press by the High Commission of India in Colombo follows:
PR No.21/2009
29 July, 2009
PRESS RELEASE
The Eastern Province Railbus Project was today formally inaugurated in Batticaloa by the High Commissioner of India, Shri Alok Prasad, together with the Hon. Dullas Alahapperuma, Minister of Transport and the Hon. Basil Rajapaksa, Senior Advisor to the President. Also present on the occasion were the Chief Minister of the Eastern Province, Hon. Sivanesathurai Chandrakanthan, Ministers Ameer Ali and V. Muralitharan, the Mayor of Batticaloa, Hon. Sivageetha Prabhaharan and Eastern Province Minister MLAM Hizbullah.
The project aims to provide a quick and affordable avenue of transport between Batticaloa and Trincomalee by converting conventional buses to run on existing rail tracks. The Government of India has accordingly provided ten buses (at a cost of SLR 44 million) to Sri Lanka Railways and also made available an additional SLR 22 million to pay for the cost of conversion of these buses into 5 railbus units in the Sri Lanka Railways workshops in Ratmalana. The entire project, costing about SLR 66 million, is expected to be completed by the end of August 2009. It is hoped that, when the service is fully in place, passengers will not have to undergo delays in making the journey from Batticaloa to Trincomalee and back.
The project is a manifestation of Government of India’s commitment to the development of the Eastern Province and its desire to contribute to the efforts of the Government of Sri Lanka in building up infrastructure in the Province, so as to assure an early return to normalcy and stability in the lives of the people.
