President Sirisena’s plan to ban carpentry sheds and timber mills may not have anything to do with deteriorating forest cover at all. Given the family are experts at monopolizing industries, this maybe an attempt to help his son Daham Sirisena’s father-in-law Athula Rohan Weeraratne monopolize trade for his home fixtures business.
Daham’s wife Nipuni is Elcardo owner Weeraratne’s daughter.
Sirisena in a speech yesterday announced a set of ‘revolutionizing’ moves to put a stop to rapid deforestation in the country. The radical moves is set to include a ban on timber mills, all equipment used to fell trees and carpentry sheds.
His intentions though may be motivated very little by his love for forests, and have a lot to do with helping Daham’s father in law’s business benefit. The newly added range of business interests to the Sirisena family following Daham’s wedding includes aluminium home fittings as well as wooden flooring!
It was on May 09 – not even before a month expired since Easter attacks – that Daham wed Nipuni in a lavish ceremony at the Hilton Colombo.
Sanga / June 9, 2019
Sri Lanka’s association with timber is as old as it’s civilisation. “Lovamahapaya” which was build by the King Dutugemunu in the second Century B.C., had a complete timber structure originally comprising nine stories having a height of over 20 meters. It had been vital even in bringing our ancestors to this island. Kings also had exported wood and wood-based material to other nations, such as ships and components such as king Bhuvanekabahu I’s offer to the Sultan of Egypt to build 20 vessels a year.
The increased construction activities in Sri Lanka has created an increased demand for timber. Since the 1980’s after vast acarages of forest land was flooded for projects like the victoria reservior and others were taken over by the government to create protected forest coverage (what was effectively the land of the indegenous Veddha community) there had been no legal logging of natural forests in Sri Lanka, other than forest plantations setup for those purposes.
Even though natural forests and forest plantations have the potential to supply country’s total timber demand, most of this is either in inaccessible, protected areas or felling is banned. Therefore, around 70% of the industrial timber has to be supplied from home gardens, rubber and coconut plantations. In Sri Lanka, rubber wood is the principal type of timber in the furniture and wood industry.
The sawn wood is used widely for three important purpose, namely manufacture of furniture (19%), doors/windows (38%) and roofing materials (42%). Other wood types are used in the tourism, tea, brick/tile industries, paper industry, for plywood and many others. The country’s wood consumption per capita/year is similar to other countries in Asia and significantly less than in Europe, Oceanea and the Americas.
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kumar / June 10, 2019
thank you for a most informative comment.
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Sanga / June 9, 2019
Lets plant trees on abandoned paddy fields, they were once forests…
A tree has a lifespan, a carpenter gives it new life…
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K.Anaga / June 9, 2019
I remember reading somewhere that Mahinda was concerned, that, even coffins wont be available if carpentry sheds are banned. It may be true, But Mahinda need not give undue importance to coffins. It appears that Srilanka will be Arabianized sooner than later commencing from Kathankudi and the need for coffins will be considerably reduced. Muslims do not use coffins to bury their dead.
If necessary you may use reusable stainless steel coffins in which the bodies could be taken and emptied either for burial or cremation. The undertakers/florists could take the coffin back and disinfect before reuse.
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shankar / June 11, 2019
K.anaga
” disinfect before reuse.”
why?corpse to corpse.They would like each others smell won’t they? I personally would like a fellow corpses smell when i go in there than the smell of disinfectant.
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K.Pillai / June 9, 2019
The MS plan {“To Ban Carpentry Sheds”} may appear to be irrational.
But maybe the political exigency demanded it.
But CT: What is the relevance of {“Move To Benefit Daham’s Father-In-Law”}?
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Nimal Tissa Wijethunga / June 10, 2019
Dear Commentators, In my understanding that this is a ban on mobile carpentries and the carpentries located in side forest or close to forest areas where connected with deforesting related underworld activities and most of these operations are directly or indirectly connected to local politicians and powerful people in the particular locality.
Therefore, this is not connected with traditional carpentries run by carpenters specifically in Moratuwa area as a traditional practise for ages.
In my view, this kind of drastic measures must be taken to annihilate deforestation as this is a menace and destruction of National heritage as well. One of the biggest offender in recent times was none other than Rishad Bathieuddine.
Further, this must be continued as a National policy on environment and rather opposing to the policy decision, all leaders must support this sort of action and must be strengthened the hands of the person trying to take the leadership on this subject matter.
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shankar / June 11, 2019
nimal
how do you know that the mobile thing did not come up after the heat on sira.He likes to set fire,but when he feels the heat he backtracks quickly.What about the hanging of the drug dealers in prison?asbestos ban?Glycophosate ban? etc etcblah,blah,blah
All fart no shit character.In fairness to mahinda he did not open his mouth so much.He was a doer,not a talker windbag.Only problem with him was killings and censorship.
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