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7th February 1999

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A view form the hills

Frontal assault

It is welcome to learn that both the Hotel Suisse and the Topaz/Tourmaline are being refurbished. Good. Tells us that things are being really streamlined. But there seems to be something rather fishy in Kandy's hotel scene. As anyone in the hotel industry will tell you, the confidence, dependability and reliability of a hotel are only as good as its Front Office. It is here that, that all-important first impression counts for so much in our comfort services.

One Front Office however seems to wallow in taking those time-honoured three steps backwards. The upshot? Thefts, heavy larceny, all manner of skullduggery, employees hauled into the police station, one at least remanded, while in the Front Office the nabobs keep staggering around wondering how it all could be their fault. No hotel would like to admit that it is a haven for thieves, but the thieves have had a field day of late. People still question the sanity of keeping large sums of money in a little Front Office safe and are equally shocked to learn that this safe had been surreptitiously opened and about Rs. 300,000 taken away. Nobody wishes to admit to a basic weakness in the system that had given the safe rifler or riflers licence and opportunity.

Even as the police moved in and staff were taken in for questioning, an expensive camera, property of a guest, also disappeared. All this has encouraged certain persons to "finger" those they disliked, resulting in even those who were not on duty on the day/night of the thefts, being hauled into the police station and forced to spend as many as five hours there. Such a to-do and all because the Front Office is certainly not what it is cut out to be. This ridiculous sham has made the hotel suffer both in prestige and reputation, more so when "keys" had been used to open the safe and no one can give a sensible explanation. What is also intriguing is that the money was subsequently "found", tucked away in a bag in the premises of the hotel!

The season begins soon and hotels in Kandy like to be recognised as hotels. Not Thieves' Kitchens!

High-rise car park

A drive-in high-rise to accommodate 250 cars is coming up behind Walker's, Kandy. This, it is said, will ease the parking problem in the city but many think the effect will be minimal. Parking in the city is chaotic and the chaos is fuelled by the Municipality's "parking girls" who are apparently in cahoots with many traders and shopkeepers, especially on Colombo Street. It has now become the practice of these traders to block all entry of vehicles outside their shops by the posting of trolleys, oil drums and packing cases so that no vehicle can park, save those that do business with the shopkeeper. Even the traffic police turn a blind eye and as for the parking girls... they just tell drivers to find some other place.

A pappadam post

Motorists like it very much. At the Tennekumbura bridge junction, one road goes to Haragama across the river and the other to Digana. Also across the river, is a police post. A policeman sits inside this specially erected post — a post provided by the manufacturers of Elephant Pappadams. The usual barricades are there, but everybody enjoys the sight of this post. It is neatly built, and there is a corrugated roof and corrugated strips on three sides too, all painted black. And on the three sides, in broad yellow letters: Courtesy of Elephant Pappadams.

Nice touch that. A pappadam post. Takes the tedium out of travel. But seriously, though, a regular user of this road asks why these police posts are also not given the extension of an angled roof that covers at least a foot-and-a-half of the road. "It rains a lot here," he said, "and the policemen in the posts never come out to check vehicles when it's raining. I have travelled this road daily and am never stopped when it's raining hard. Now if I were a Tiger, I will certainly wait for a rainy day to drive through with my bombs." Now that's a thought the police would do well to take seriously.

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