CPA Hattotuwa Must Answer Instead Of Dodging And Misleading

By Uvindu Kurukulasuriya - June 4, 2014

Uvindu Kurukulasuriya

I am compelled to write this in response to an article penned by Groundviews editor Sanjana Hattotuwa. His article is titled “Response to article in Colombo Telegraph”.

Colombo Telegraph recently reported that Hattotuwa was removed from the CPA’s senior staff after verbally abusing a female co-worker. We alsoreported that Hattotuwa had asked the Coordinator of CPA’s Media Unit to put down expenses incurred at the Gallery Cafe of Paradise Road Galleries as ‘travel expenses’.  Documents in our possession show that Hattotuwa spent Rs 20,865 on food and alcohol for a night out with friends using foreign tax payers’ money.

Instead of answering the allegations Hattotuwa alleges that I kept the said bills for ten years and asked why they appear only now in the public domain.

This is completely untrue. The truth is that I first saw part of that evidence only towards the end of 2011.

He says, “I find it curious that the article refers to the Media Unit coordinator, who isn’t named, as a male. The last time CPA’s Media Unit had a male coordinator was before 2004.  Since 2004, the institution has had two female coordinators – one from 2004 to 2012, and the other from 2012 to date.”

If that is the case, the truth is that CPA’s Media Unit had a male coordinator until October 2007.

Hattotuwa says, ‘In 2009, a series of email exchanges with the then coordinator of the Media Unit, CPA’s Executive Director and the Editor of Colombo Telegraph, an erstwhile employee of CPA, also clearly alluded to allegations along the same lines as that which is now in public.’                                    Read More