Tuesday, August 04, 2020

Over Rs.2.82 bn for Parliament last year

Daily News: Sri Lanka: Tuesday, 04 August 2020.
In response to an application under the Right to Information Act (RTI), the Parliament also said the total cost of the Parliamentary activities for the first two months of 2020 ending February 28 is Rs.418,368,665.00 (Rs.418 Mn), out of which Rs.3.8 million is for capital expenditures and Rs.414 million for recurrent expenditures.
Parliament had a total of 879 staff members as at January 1, 2020.
However, the Parliamentary authorities said they were not in a position to distinguish the average cost of Parliament on a sitting day and a non-sitting day as the cost varies monthly.
Since the first meeting of the last Parliament on September 1, 2015 until the dissolution of Parliament on March 2, 2020, there have been 414 sitting days. According to the information provided, only three members have been present for more than 400 sitting days in Parliament during that period. They are Gayantha Karunatilake (404), Prof. Ashu Marasinghe (404) and K.K. Piyadasa (400).
There are seven members who were present for less than 100 days in Parliament. They are late Arumugan Thondaman (90), Roshan Ranasinghe (95) and Premalal Jayasekara (83), D.B. Herath (19), Manoj Hewagampalage (21), Waruna Liyanage (10) and Saman Rathnapriya (6), who were appointed to fill the seats vacated due to the demise of MPs Salinda Dissanayake, Chandrasiri Gajadheera, Ranjith De Zoysa and the resignation of Dr. Jayampathi Wickremeratne respectively.
Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa was present for 138 days, former Speaker Karu Jayasuriya was present for 385 days, former Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe for 353, former Opposition Leader R. Sampanthan for 271 days, former Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa for 160 days and former Chief Government Whip Anura Kumara Dissanayake for 324 days.
In this Parliament, there were 12 female members, which is approximately a 5.3 per cent representation for women out of the 225 members.
These members were Pavithradevi Wanniarachchi, Sumedha G.Jayasena, Chandrani Bandara, Thalatha Athukorala, Vijayakala Maheshwaran, Dr. Sudarshani Fernandopulle, Sriyani Wijewickreme, Dr. Anoma Gamage, Hirunika Eranjali Premachandra, Dr. Thusitha Wijemanne, Rohini Kumari Wijerathna and Shanthi Sriskantharajah.