Daily NEWS Srilanka

Palitha Thevarapperuma of this government appears to have replaced the position of creating news by Mervin Silva of the past regime. Whatever it is his methodology is different. The conflict he entered into with an employee of a hotel in Dewata area, Galle Electorate when Deputy Minister
Palitha Thevarapperuma happened to be present at a promotional programme of UNP members at Galle Electoral Division day-before-yesterday (26) took place in the following manner.

On the occasion Deputy Minister Palitha stepped into that hotel to have his breakfast that morning he had used harsh words on the waiter asking him to bring him that food and the waiter had responded saying, "Don't speak like that". The hotel employee had thus explained it as the root cause for the conflict. Later the Deputy Minister is supposed to have got hold of him by the neck and had assaulted him. In the process, another person who came to the hotel too had got involved in this incident and had subsequently fallen down. How this conflict took place is recorded in CCTV cameras of the hotel.

Initially the hotel employee had not identified that it was a Deputy Minister. After this incident in the morning another incident had followed. The Deputy Minister had come to this same hotel the same day around 4 in the evening in the company of the Health Officer of Galle and a group of Public Health Officers, explaining matters of uncleanliness of the hotel.

This is how the Deputy Minister Palitha Thevarapperuma spoke about the incident concerned: "I didn't assault anybody. I pointed out about the uncleanliness of the hotel. It is to cover up that -- this story is being brought forward. We went to have breakfast at about 6.45 in the morning. While having breakfast it was noticed that a person who came to the hotel slipped and fell. That person was from Kegalle area. It was that he knocked against the waiter and fell down. I then said, "you'll must work with some attention ... help him get up". Subsequently I took him towards the tap. "Couldn't go near the kitchen ... so unclean! There were heaps of garbage near the cooking place. It was a kind of hell. Toilet pits were overflowing in the rear section. After that I got connected to the Health Officer over the phone and spoke to him about this".

The manner in which the Deputy Minister posed questions against the hotel has been looked down upon by Hotel Owners' Society. The following video has been recorded in a Facebook Page of Deputy Minister Thevarapperuma.