For the first time in the history of Parliament, some members of the staff were seen gathering to walk out in protest around midday on Friday (5).

Employees said they had decided to walk out around noon to protest against three corrupt officials of Parliament who had attempted to stop the implementation of the decisions taken by the Secretary General of Parliament and also were working to stop the SG appointed in an acting capacity being confirmed in service.

They said these three officials had bad records in the past and were trying to harass the staff working under them.

However the walk out was later called off as the senior management had refused to accede to the recommendation by the three officials that employees be denied an allowance, they said.

Spl. parliamentary com. to monitor fund allocation

A special committee of Parliament sat to consider the votes of the 21 ministries and presented its report to the House during the committee stage debate on the votes of those ministries on Friday (5).

Parliamentarians of both the government and the Opposition were members of this committee appointed for the first time and they had expressed their views about the allocation of the ministerial funds. Both the government and the opposition had agreed that a special committee of this nature would be useful for the future too and could also be used to gauge feedback on the ongoing programmes, the Leader of the House Nimal Siripala de Silva, said.

JVP parliamentary group leader Anura Dissanayake said according to the Central Bank report 2007 the ministries had only implemented 24 percent of the capital expenditure programmes which accounted for less than one quarter of the total number. Therefore it was very important to appoint a parliamentary committee that could monitor the progress of those programmes.