While the Election Commission (EC) recently stated that the estimation of over Rs. 2 billion made by the Police for Local Government (LG) election policing-related expenditure cannot be accepted due to the exorbitant amount, the Police yesterday (9) claimed that severe inflation is the reason for such a high estimation. 

Speaking to The Daily Morning, Police Media Spokesman, Senior Superintendent of Police, and Attorney Nihal Thalduwa said that while the inflation rate is around 55%, the expenses had increased by three-fold or five-fold, which had also affected the Police. When queried as to why the election expenditure estimation had increased with regard to the Police compared to previous years, he explained: “Expenses in the country have increased by threefold, four-fold, or at instances, even five-fold. We need to increase police mobile services across the country when considering the security situation. We have to spend on food and maintenance. Currently, the inflation rate is at around 55%. Therefore, it will affect us as well. We need to be prepared in advance to face urgent situations, so we cannot just avoid them by saying that we do not have the required allocations.” 

He further said: “If it is a Divisional Secretariat or any such institution, they have office work and their expenditure rates are mostly fixed. But, our task is different. We cannot determine how a situation would arise. We cannot say that we don’t have money during such situations and just wait without facing them. Therefore, there may be increases in our expenses.” 

Earlier, when queried by The Daily Morning regarding whether the Police had quoted an estimation for election-related expenditure, EC Chairman Attorney Nimal G. Punchihewa said: “Yes. We cannot accept their estimation. They have estimated over Rs. 2 billion. They have not sent the details but have only sent the estimation. We will need to amend the estimation according to the details.”