Ranga Suriarachchi, General Manager of PrintCare Secure Limited, has sent us the following Clarification and Right of Reply with regard to an article that appeared in the Daily News on January 12, 2021, authored by Amrit Muttukumaru titled “COPE : Coping with corruption in the private sector” (which appeared in these spaces) in which he refers to the Daily News of December 7, 2020 that carried a news item on its front page under the heading “NLB procurement influenced by then Foreign Minister – COPE”.
The Right of Reply follows: “We request you to please give us the courtesy of a ‘Right of Reply’ with reference to both items, i.e. Muttukumaru’s comments and your own news item that we regrettably missed. Both, the news item of December 7, 2020 and Muttukumaru’s article, cast unfair aspersions upon the integrity of our company, PrintCare Secure (Pvt.) Limited and we wish to reply to both.”
“We are not surprised to read Muthukumaru’s article or the way it is slanted as he has had a personal vendetta against the Managing Director of this company for over 15 years. Muthukumaru has been sued for willful defamation by our Managing Director thrice and came to settlements in court on two occasions and has also paid money to a charity nominated by the Petitioner as relief granted. We attach a news item that appeared in the Sunday Times of November 8, 2015, titled “Colombo Resident apologises to Rotary International President, pays Rs. 10,000 to charity”. A judgement/order is pending on the third application.”
“With reference to your news item of December 7, 2020, we wish to point out that our company recognised that National Lotteries Board (NLB) had acted unfairly in awarding a tender to Aqua Flex Lanka Limited in the year 2017.”
“Having exhausted all our options of appealing to the NLB Chairman, Minister Karunanayake (subject Minister) and the Tender Appeals board and failing to find reprieve, we named the entire Cabinet as Respondents, in our court application SC FR. No. 197/2017 filed before the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka against the NLB and the Government of Sri Lanka against what we believed to be a mendacious award of a tender for the production of scratch lottery tickets to the said company which had never before supplied a single lottery ticket.”
“After hearings commenced, on the advice of the Attorney General, the Government, following a Cabinet directive, decided to cancel the tender and so informed Court. You will note that we have only followed due process of the law to vindicate our rights.”
“At no time have we approached a member of the Cabinet for help of any sort nor did we attempt to influence any member of the tender committee. We were not privy to whether Minister Mangala Samaraweera supported or opposed this action by the Cabinet.”
“We wish to also point out that contrary to what Muthukumaru has stated, the NLB records will show that fresh tenders have in fact been floated and awards made, although we have not benefited in any way by such awards. We place before you these correct facts with supporting documents so that you may correct the wrong impression that may have been created in the minds of the public by your news item and by the opinion expressed by Muttukumaru which we will separately deal with in the appropriate forum.”
“We may mention that the Sunday Times carried a similar article dated December 6, 2020 and subsequently printed our response the following week giving it equal prominence. We are copying the Chairman of COPE for his information.”
