Financial Times

Tourist Board fiasco
No finality yet on Mahinda’s appointment
Has President Mahinda Rajapakse backtracked on his own ruling to appoint a new chairman of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, with the controversial Udaya Nanayakkara continuing as its head? Even though Nawalage Bennet Cooray, a former MP, was informed of his appointment as chairman by the President’s Office on the previous Friday, he hadn’t still received the letter of appointment from Tourism Minister Anura Bandaranaike who was away in Dubai.

“I haven’t still got the letter of appointment,” Cooray told The Sunday Times FT two days ago. He said a week ago he had been informed by a senior assistant secretary at the Presidential Secretariat that the President had notified both the Tourism Minister and Secretary, Dr M Ramanujam by letter of the new appointment. This week’s change of events stunned a major section of the industry which had breathed a sign of relief that Nanayakkara was being removed, although Cooray was nowhere near their choice.

“This is very disappointing to us,” said Hiran Cooray, President of the Sri Lanka Hoteliers Association. “We thought the crisis was over … but its not.” The industry is not in favour of Udaya Nanayakkara continuing as tourism chief for many reasons including his opposition to the new Tourism Development Act, haughty attitude towards officials and arrogance. The move to appoint Cooray came after The Sunday Times published a story on the crisis under the heading 'Tourist Board ex-chief refuses to quit'. Last week, The Sunday Times published details of how a letter was delivered by President's secretary Lalith Weeratunge to Minister Bandaranaike just as he was preparing to leave for the airport on a tourism promotion mission to Dubai.

NOTE; The Sunday Times FT published a comment in its last issue on the situation within the tourism industry, and was very critical of the conduct of the Minister of Tourism and the Chairman of the Tourist Board. However, the paper regrets that certain passages therein contained remarks of a personal nature, which is not the practice of the newspaper. Due to printing exigencies last week due to the fact that it was a X'mas edition, these remarks that had been edited had not been effected and the raw copy had gone into print.

While The Sunday Times apologises to the two, the Minister and the Chairman for these remarks of a personal nature, the newspaper re-iterates the drift of the Comment which was that the country's vital tourism industry is in deep trouble due partly at least to the official conduct of the Minister and the Chairman concerned.

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