'President will liberate motherland from LTTE'

Raja Waidyasekera Tissamaharama special corr

President Mahinda Rajapaksa, who is a Southerner is in the process of liberating the motherland from the LTTE in spite of repeated LTTE death threats said Port and Civil Aviation Minister Chamal Rajapaksa.

He said, President Mahinda Rajapaksa won the presidential elections with a great majority.

The Minister was addressing a meeting at Singapore hall at Siribopura Hambantota in which a group of supporters of former UNP SPC member M. S. Usuph also known as "Raja Mahaththaya" joined the SLFP.

About 1,000 persons who were fed up with the present UNP leadership joined the SLFP.

The Minister said it was during the presidential elections that the former UNP SPC member M. S. Usuph joined the SLFP.

He was an additional strength for us then," he said. The minister said that from then onwards M. S. Usuph supported the SLFP in all its political activities. Rajapaksa said Usuph has been named a candidate for the forthcoming Southern Provincial Council Elections.

For the past 35 years there has not been any development in the North and East. But now with the liberation of the area mammoth infrastructure development schemes are taking place.

The irrigation network rehabilitation is in progress in the North. The abandoned paddy fields could be cultivated from the water of the tanks in the area after rehabilitation of the irrigation network, he said.

A commercial and a fisheries harbour is being set up at Oluwila in Ampara district.

The airport at Mattala will soon become a reality. The engineering unit of the Sri Lanka army will be deployed to carry out the preliminary activities of the airport.

The location of the airport was shifted to Mattala from Weerawila at the request of the farming community.

The minister said there were only four doctors at the Hambantota district hospital in 1995. It has now being converted to a national hospital.

The nursing school at Hambantota has proved to be a boon to the educated girls in the district, Minister Rajapaksa said.

There is a demand for nurses in foreign countries. At the moment there are 15,000 vacancies.

A dockyard will also be set up at Hambantota to repair ships.

The former UNP SPC member who joined SLFP during presidential election said that he was an SPC UNP member for 12 years. But he was not capable of serving the people to their utmost satisfaction because the power was only with the UNP leadership.

The power was never decentralised under a UNP regime.

The Hambantota town has almost all the facilities as such I concentrated on raising the living conditions of the less fortunate downtrodden masses in the rural areas the former SPC member said.

The meeting was named as Sahajeevanaye Jana Hamuwa.

The UC chairman Gamini Sri Ananda was also present.