Sri Lanka to build tallest tower in South Asia

Qadijah Irshad     5 January 2012
COLOMBO - Sri Lanka is set to build the tallest tower in the South Asian region, the government announced recently. The 350 metre high tower building, the promoters claim, will be visible to India and Bangladesh.

Estimated to cost more than $104 million, the “Lotus Tower” will provide facilities for 50 television services, 50 broadcasting services and 10 telecommunication providers. In addition to its primary function, the tower podium, which is proposed to be four storeys high, will accommodate a telecommunication museum, food courts, offices, conference hall and exhibition spaces.

Two floors of the 11 storyed multi-faceted tower is also planned to be developed with luxury hotel accommodation, a revolving restaurant accommodating 600 guests on the fourth floor and a banquet hall for over a thousand guests.

Planned to be built in a three hectare land in the heart of Colombo, the Lotus Tower is one of Sri Lanka’s many development projects designed to help the country’s rapidly growing tourism industry. Since the end of its three-decade ethnic conflict, the country is emerging as one of the most popular tourist destinations of the region.The project through its telecommunication infrastructure also aims at eliminating high-powered TV and FM antennas perched atop buildings around Colombo as part of the government’s Colombo beautification plan. The tower mast, fixed upon the tower head is arranged to provide a base for antennas of service providers in telecommunication, telecasting, broadcasting, and defence-related transmission with the antenna installed 350 metres above ground.

The Director-General of the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, Anusha Pelpita, said that there will be a significant development in the television and telecommunication.

The Lotus Tower will be the tallest building in South Asia and the 19^th tallest building in the world. It will be 26-metre taller than the Eiffel Tower and 17.4-metre taller than the 332.6-metre high Tokyo Tower. The Tokyo Sky Tree with a height of 634 meters presently being constructed and scheduled to be completed in February this year, will be the tallest tower in the world followed by the Canton Tower of China with a height of 600 metres.

The construction of the Lotus Tower is planned to be completed in 30 months and funded by EXIM Bank of the People’s Republic of China.

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Thalaimannar IDPs 'made refugees again'

Nearly 600 families are now made refugees in their own village, they say, as their ancestral land has been taken over by the military Nearly 600 families recently re-settled in their ancestral lands in Thalaimannar say they were made homeless again due to "land grab" by the military. The families who were evicted from Thalaimannar by the Tamil Tigers in 1990 were recently requested by the government to resettle in their ancestral lands. But once resettled, they say, they were once again evicted by the police and military. The families are currently camping in a land belonged to local mosque. No facilities “We thought we would be offered some kind of relief once resettled here but now the navy and army say we should not live in these lands,” one woman said. The refugees are even finding it difficult to find drinking water The villagers have been living in various parts of Sri Lanka after the LTTE eviction until the government made a special request for them to come and re-settle in their original lands. But the officials have told them, they say, that the lands in which they previously lived now belonged to the government. “Police evicted us saying that these are state lands,” said another man. Joseph Neville Francis, 65, says that nearly 600 families are now made refugees in their own village as their ancestral land has been taken over by the military. The refugees are even finding it difficult to find drinking water, journalist Dinasena Rathugamage who visited the camps reports. “No facilities at all here. If someone falls ill we don’t know what to do,” another refugee said. "These are our ancestral lands, not government lands. The president must give us our lands back," said another. Local government officials told BBC Sandeshaya that they could not respond without prior approval from the ministry of resettlement. ---------------------------------------------------------- Dispossessing And Disempowering The People Sunday, September 11, 2011 By Tisaranee Gunasekara Shanties will disappear with the beautification of Colombo - Photos courtesy: www.wsws.org “Do not make us  Read More »