Health and Mass Media Minister Dr Nalinda Jayatissa laid the foundation stone on Thursday for a new two-storey postal administration building at the Nuwara Eliya post office premises, at an estimated cost of Rs 78.34 million.
Conserving the historic Nuwara Eliya post office is not merely the renovation of an old building, the Minister said, but a task of national importance that protects national heritage while adding new value to the country’s tourism industry, Hiru News reported.
Two separate projects on one site
The reporting describes two distinct undertakings, and the distinction matters.
The new building. The Rs 78.34 million structure is a new two-storey block to house the Nuwara Eliya Regional Postal Superintendent’s office and the postal operations division. This is what Thursday’s foundation stone marks.
The conservation. The historic building itself — constructed during the British colonial period — is to undergo separate conservation work. Once that is complete, it is to be developed as a tourism promotion centre providing guidance to local and foreign visitors. The conservation is being carried out with the labour contribution of the Sri Lanka Navy, under the supervision of the Department of Buildings and the Department of Archaeology.
In other words, the headline figure is the cost of the new administration block, not of the heritage restoration. No cost or timetable for the conservation work itself is given.
The project board photographed at the ceremony carries the same cost figure, Rs 78,340,000, a project start date of 2026.11.05, and the Department of Buildings as the responsible agency — matching the written account. It also names a contractor, read as VOV Engineering (Pvt), which does not appear in the text of the filing; that reading is taken from the photograph and is not independently confirmed here.
The Minister also inspected construction of a two-storey tourist holiday resort and an official residences building at the Unique View area of Nuwara Eliya.
What is not reported
The filing gives no completion date for either the new building or the conservation, no breakdown of how the Rs 78.34 million is to be spent, and no indication of whether postal counter services continue uninterrupted during the work. It does not say when the historic building was constructed, beyond placing it in the British colonial period, and does not state who will operate the planned tourism promotion centre.
Sourcing note
This is an overnight filing published at 11.54 p.m. Colombo time and no other verified newsroom had carried it at the time of writing. Searches returned earlier coverage of the same building — including a ministry-level review of restoration plans and repeated reporting on its disrepair — but all of it predates this week by months or years and is therefore outside this desk’s sourcing window. It is not cited here.