CHOGM Benz cars maybe up for sale

No CHOGM Benz  cars for Ministers .... those will be sold

Each Benz car imported to Sri Lanka for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting is supposed to be of the value of 360 lakhs and none of those vehicles would be given to any Minister or government servant and that those will be given back to the company from whom they were brought to be resold to some other party, according to government sources.

In addition to these 54 vehicles which were financed by the Bank of Ceylon, 40 defender jeeps had been brought down. It is reported that all vehicles concerned have been temporarily registered for a period of 2 weeks under the name CHOGM and had thus been used in that manner. As reported, these jeeps are expected to be released for use by the Sri Lankan Army. During the period when these Benz cars were stationed at the Colombo Nelum Pokuna car park, many stories began to spread around. Later, there were reports of incidents that those vehicles had met with accidents on their trial runs.

Minister Basil Rajapaksha mentioned at a meeting yesterday (19) that rumours published about various Ministers tying to compete in grabbing these vehicles was without any foundation and he said that these vehicles would be handed over to the people from whom they were brought and there was nothing more than that.

DIMO Motors who deal with imports of Benz cars to Sri Lanka have mentioned that they do not hold themselves responsible for bringing these cars down to Sri Lanka and that they had only been involved in attending to the duties of inspection and distribution after the vehicles were brought down by the company who undertook finance facilities which had been at the latter's expense.

Though the average value with tax exemption of a Benz car model, Hybrid type is 360 lakhs, neither Bank of Ceylon nor DIMO Motors were willing to reveal the value of these vehicles.

Though the United National Party questioned about the requirement of the rights of the masses to know about these vehicles bought at the expense of public funds and also all other expenses incurred in relation to CHOGM, it is supposed that no one is willing to expose any information about it for fear of criticism that could be aimed at the government and thereby lose the public vote in respect of considering the wastage of public funds. Whatever it is, what Minister Basil Rajapaksha said yesterday was that the parliament is prepared to expose all details in relation to expenditure incurred in respect of CHOGM.