Champikas Cabinet paper on the Coal Tender - Who siphoned off Rs 12 Billion?BY J. RICHARD JAYAWARDENA- 2015-08-13Information received from the ministry of Power and Energy reveals that someone has tried to pilfer a sum of s 12!18 "illion in the procedure to supply coal as raw material for the ne#t three years on "ehalf of the $%a&vi'aya$ thermal power station in (orochcholai) Puttalam!*ith this incident "eing disclosed in the media) gradually the voices of a certain group have "ecome silent) and the side e+ect of this that supplying coal re,uired for the %a&vi'aya power plant has "ecome a pro"lem!-ources of the power plant says that there is only su.cient coal to run the power plant until 15th /ugust) and thereafter operations at the thermal power station will come to a standstill!It is also said that production at the %a&vi'aya power station has "een restricted as well! 0o override that shortage it is said that the 1erawalapitiyapower station is producing e#tra power!2iesel is used for production of power at the 1erawalapitiya Power -tation! 0he cost of a unit of electricity produced using diesel is s 22! 0he cost of a unit of power produced at the (orochcholai 0hermal Power plant using coal is s 3! /ccordingly the loss due to producing electricity at the 1erawalapitiya Power -tation) per unit is s 15! 0he monthly loss therefore amounts to hundreds of thousands of rupees!0he loss in purchasing coal for the use of the (orochcholai Power -tation runs into millions of rupees! 0he loss due to the delay in getting supplies of coal is also massive!0he reason for this series of incidents is as follows4/ccording to the 5a"inet Paper su"mitted "y the 6inister of Power and Energy Patali 5hampi&a anawa&a on the 3th of this month) it is stated thatthe (orochcholai7%a&vi'aya 0hermal Power -tation in Puttalam is the one and only coal power station "elonging to the 5eylon Electricity 8oard!0he capacity of this thermal power station which was constructed in three stages) in order to supply electricity to the island in line with the demand is 900 mega watts! 0he contract for construction of this power station was given to $5hina 6achinery Engineering 5orporation!$ 0he monthly production is 5:0 ;iga watt hours! 0he 6inister has stated further that