Market Without Lights

Vendors who have moved in to the new Wellawatte market are bereft of electricity in their stalls.
One of the butchers operating from these premises who moved in last Thursday told this reporter that the electricity board has been saying that they cannot provide their stalls with power as the building plan had not been submitted to them.
They had allegedly been given quit orders to move out from the old Wellawatte market to the new one by December 15 with the promise that they would however be provided with electricity connections to their stalls by the Colombo Municipality which owns the two buildings.
“With no electricity I cannot use my fridge,” the butcher who didn’t want to be named said. The new building is complete with a four storeyed unutilised carpark. Allegedly the contractor had not been paid his dues by the Municipality, the cause for this hiatus. “This reporter noticed that though the market per se had lights, not so the stalls, with some of the more enterprising stallholders illumining their stalls with generators.
Another grouse by the butcher was that there was no nameboard signifying that the new building housed the Wellawatte market. He also said that their tendered price for the stall at Rs. 500,000 for the year was much more compared to the Rs. 350,000 he had had to pay the Municipality when operating from the old market.
The butcher said that he sells between 50-100 kilos of beef daily with prices varying from between Rs. 450 to Rs. 480 a kg.