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| Monday, 13 September 2004 |
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Probe into Rs.750 m fraud at CTB workshops The Central Transport Board (CTB) will take legal action against the Werahera and Keppetipola workshop administration who had allegedly "disappeared" a large number of CTB buses, machinery and spare parts worth Rs 750 million during the previous regime. CTB Acting Chairman Nihal Perera told the Daily News yesterday that the Attorney General's Department was taking steps to file action against the workshop administration. "We have provided all details and documents required to prove the case to the Attorney General's Department. "It is our responsibility to make sure that those responsible for this massive fraud are brought to justice and make them compensate the loss caused," he said. According to the Transport Ministry, 143 buses from various cluster bus companies of the CTB have disappeared after being sent for repairs to the Werahera and Keppetipola workshops. "The CTB had sent around 150 buses that were temporarily out of operation to these workshops," a Transport Ministry spokesman said. "However, according to CTB authorities only 10 of these buses returned from the workshops, " he said. "We suspect a massive fraud behind this." The CTB Acting Chairman said they have now found out that these buses had been sent for repairs by the then CTB officials without following the specified procedure. "The buses had been sent for repairs to the workshops without any proper agreement between the parties and without documents," the Acting Chairman said. Apart from State-owned buses, spare parts worth Rs 750 million have allegedly been removed from buses and sold to third parties by the workshop administration while a large number of machinery at the workshops are also reported to be missing. Perera said that parallel to civil proceedings, the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) was also probing the disappearance of the buses. The complaints about disappearance of state-owned buses come at a time when the total number of CTB buses operated daily has dropped to 3,000. The country's passenger transport sector is dominated by a network of some 17,000 private buses. "The CTB has more than 7,000 buses. But out of this only 4,000 buses deemed to be roadworthy were generally used. In recent years, we had to reduce to 3,000 owing to the bad condition of buses," Ministry sources said. |
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