Minister Sunil Handunnetti says the difficulty of running a government is apparent only to those doing it, telling an audience in Matara that even sourcing road tar has become hard.
Speaking at a ceremony in Matara on Wednesday, the minister responded directly to the question being put to the administration as it passes the two-year mark, Hiru News reported.
“Some people ask what the government has done in two years,” he said. “Some are under the impression that in two years you should conjure things up as if with Cinderella’s magic wand. This is a society that suffered for 76 years. Never mind anything else — these days even finding the tar to put on the road is hard. Finding the tar that has been laid is not easy either.”
He went on: “Anyone standing and watching can ask what was done. But it is when you are doing it that you understand the difficulty. Doing nothing is easy. You don’t have to listen to abuse either.”
What the remark does and does not say
The filing carries the complaint about tar supply as a rhetorical aside rather than a policy statement. It gives no figures for road construction, no explanation of why tar — bitumen, almost all of it imported — is in short supply, and no indication of whether the shortage is one of foreign exchange, procurement, supply or price.
Handunnetti’s “76 years” refers to the period since independence in 1948, a framing the National People’s Power has used consistently to argue that the problems it inherited predate it by decades.
Not reported
The report does not name the event or say who else spoke. It does not identify the minister’s current portfolio in relation to roads, carry any response from the road development authorities, or say whether any road project in Matara or elsewhere has been delayed by the shortage he describes.
Single source. Searches of the Daily Mirror, NewsFirst, EconomyNext, the Island, Daily FT, Daily News and Colombo Gazette found no second outlet carrying the Matara remarks. Ada Derana remains blocked to this desk.
