Colombo: With no fuel to run the crisis-stricken country, Sri Lanka’s government announced it had decided to operate only essential services from Monday midnight to July 10.
Minister and Cabinet spokesman Bandula Gunawardena told reporters that the government decided to limit fuel distribution to essential services like ports, airports, health, food distribution, and agriculture.
“This decision was taken to protect the limited reserves of fuel in the country and that they be used only for the essential services,” he said.
Requesting all others to work from home, the minister urged people to support attempts to limit the consumption of fuel in the country
All schools in capital and other main cities are to be closed until July 10 while long distances bus services are also to be cancelled from midnight.
Meanwhile, Sri Lankan High Commissioner to India, Milinda Moragoda met India’s
Petroleum and Natural Gas and Housing and Urban Affairs Minister, Hardeep Singh Puri to discuss urgent issues relating to bilateral energy cooperation.
Moragoda had detailed the current crisis Sri Lanka and its people are facing due to lack of fuel and had urged for a possibility of securing petrol and diesel supplies that are
required by Sri Lanka at present on an urgent basis.
Meanwhile, opposition parties had demanded the government resign forthwith in light of the worsening fuel crisis.
Opposition leader Sajith Premadasa demanded that the government that had failed to provide basic needs of the people should resign while Marxist party leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake claimed that country’s governing system “had exploded with careless and
negligence”.
The bankrupted south Asian island nation, with hardly any dollar reserves, was depending on India’s $500 million line of credit to purchase petroleum products since February and the final shipment with 40,000 MT of diesel arrived in Colombo on June 16.
(IANS)
