I am 86 years of age today, and thought of something which I have been always curious about and which I believe may interest your readers and the general public. I therefore thought I should write about this incident which happened some years ago and turned to your esteemed Sunday paper for publication.
I am not going into details of dates etc as I do not want to spend a lot of the short time I have to live in delving into my files, but would rather prefer to relate it as a short story which may interest your readers even more.
In 1987, after doing much research into the water flows of the upper reaches of the Belihuloya with regard to its energy potential as a hydro-electric power plant, I was awarded a Rolex Award by the Rolex watch company of Geneva, Switzerland for my painstaking work. The then President Mr .J.R.Jayewardene called me to his office and congratulated me for my work as it would have increased the hydropower potential of Sri Lanka by 7%!
During this meeting I asked the President whether we could do this as a private sector project as the CEB was not keen to do anything somebody else had discovered. However, the end result of this meeting was the establishment of a committee to ponder on the involvement of the private sector in power generation, which became the start of a change in policy of the GOSL in allowing the private sector to own power plants.
A short time later after this meeting and since I was the discoverer of the project, the CEB issued me with a Letter of Intent to develop this project. I then set about to try to find finance to enable a feasibility study which I was told by reputed consultants would cost about three million US dollars whilst the project itself might cost 50 million US dollars in total!
Firstly, at my own cost I went to Manila, Philippines, to talk with the Asian Development Bank in order to get a loan to do the feasibility study. Although the ADB was positive the CEB strangely stood in its way so that nothing came about it. The next year I went to Washington and to the World Bank and met with the head of the Sri Lanka desk and tried my best to organize a loan for the feasibility study as I had found a prominent financier in Norway to finance the project.
However even the IFC the private sector arm of the World bank told me that I would have to find the money for the feasibility study by myself, which was difficult as even my financier was not willing to pay for the feasibility study and write off the three million dollars it would have cost! I therefore came back home quite disappointed as I did not have the requisite money for the feasibility study!
A year later, on a Tuesday morning my telephone rang and when I answered it, it was from Washington and the World Bank. “Mr.Samarasinghe, this is the World Bank” said a female voice, “We have decided to give you the three million dollars for your feasibility study as a non-payable grant, and we are going to establish a company called the Private Sector Infrastructure Fund in Sri Lanka to enable such projects such as yours to be financed etc”.
This was great news and made me quite elated and I met with the head of the Infrastructure Fund a few days later in Colombo. She told me that I had to establish an agreement with the CEB in order that the electricity could be sold and then that the monies for my feasibility would be released!
However the CEB then made it difficult for me which I do not want to elaborate on. This brought the project to a complete stop and the financier whom I had brought in was extremely disappointed as to how Sri Lanka functioned. I tried my best to speak with the CEB in all honesty but it was futile.
The project then lay untouched for many years, and during the time of I believe of President Ranil Wickremesinghe, when the Minister of Electricity was Mr. Karu Jayasuriya I was told that the CEB would not allow the development of the project for reasons I cannot elucidate.
The money allocated as a grant for my project, the three million dollars was just laying around doing nothing and when I was asked what one should do with the money, I asked the authorities to return the money to the World Bank.
From that time, I lost contact with the authorities, the World Bank and everybody concerned as I was greatly disappointed with how my country functioned and lost interest in everything to do with the development of Sri Lanka and its electricity production.
Now at the age of 86 years, it would give me great pleasure to know what happened to that grant of three million dollars, whether it was returned to the World Bank or what really happened to it? I still, nearly 20 years on, do not know where that money went. I am not here accusing anybody at all but curious to know what happened to that money?
Could not the government look into this although it is not a great deal of money and let me know before I die, which will make me somewhat happy that even if some governmental institutions did not play fair with me, that that money was returned and I could die with a clear conscience!
Finally I would like to say that I do not know anything more than what I have written and I am not prepared to go to any Governmental inquiry as there is nothing more to say. If the Government wishes to find out it is their prerogative.
Thank You. —
By Vera Gamini Samarasinghe 
from The Island https://ift.tt/ZCakhsS
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