Over Rs 350,000 monthly to clean the Colombo Mayor's residence

COLOMBO (News 1st) - A proposal to spend a sum of Rs. three hundred thousand a month for cleaning the official residence of the Mayor of Colombo has been passed at the Colombo Municipal Council. Councilors charge that the proposal had been passed during council sessions on the 24th of this month. Following the proposal, the contract had been awarded to a private company for a period of two years. As per the proposal which had been produced with the knowledge of Mayor Rosy Senanayake, the Colombo municipal council will pay this private company a monthly sum of Rs. 355, 120. Over the course of the next 3 years, it will cost the taxpayer over Rs 8mn The councilors added that the proposal had not been included in the order paper of the council sessions. Although News 1st tried at several occasions to contact the Mayor of Colombo Rosy Senanayake, we were unable to reach a comment from her as she is currently overseas. However, News 1st was able to contact the Former Mayor of the CMC, Sirisena Cooray for a telephone conversation. He stated that no contract was granted to any private company during his time since they had enough people on the staff. The Former Mayor also continued to say that during his 10-year tenure at the CMC, that there never arose the need to hand the cleaning matters over to any external parties.