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We publish here without comment a letter sent in by Dr. Rajitha Senaratne regarding our news reports on the Malekelle affair.

There were many articles in the Daily News and other newspapers published by the Lake House group during the last few weeks about jak trees in the Male watte plantation and the award of tender to cut the jak trees.

On the whole, most facts in the articles were baseless and depicted irresponsible reporting. Following are the true facts of the scenario which I want you to publish to clear the good name of the Ministry of Lands and officials of the Land Reform Commission (LRC) involved in the granting of the tender.

The main reason which led to the tender for the sale of jak trees at Malewatte plantation in the Matale district is to raise money for the administration of the LRC which had reached crisis situation financially, due to the mismanagement during the past regime.

Since my taking over of the Ministry of Lands, I have taken great pains to put the house in order and give credibility and transparency to every action taken in the institutions under my purview. The tender for the sale of jak trees was granted after a complete scrutiny of the offers and it was granted to the highest bidder and not the lowest. It was obvious that there was a hidden hand behind the media campaign orchestrated after the tender was offered to the highest bidder.

Malewatte jak plantation was a private plantation vested in the Land Reform Commission in 1972 under the Land Ceiling Act.

Up to the time that I took over the Land Ministry, trees in the lands vested in the LRC were sold at unbelievably low prices due to political wrangling and vested interests.

This is the first time in the history of the LRC that trees were sold on public tender. Due to the poor availability of financial resources to manage the LRC, we decided to raise money selling some of the older trees in the LRC lands without being a burden to the treasury. The other reason is jak trees lose its productivity after 75-100 years of bearing. Once its productivity is lost, the opportunity to use the valuable timber is minimised.

I would also like to state here that the only offer we got for the sale of the timber in this plantation was Rs. 500,000. Therefore, we did not see any valid reason why we should not have sold the jak trees by public tender for Rs. 3.4 million. We discovered to our surprise that there were many who had benefitted through various underhand dealings previously and had organised a media campaign to sling mud at the present management.

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