Rajapaksa's vanity airport to turn rice storage warehouse
Highlights
Part of a vanity airport, built by toppled Sri Lankan strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, will be used as a rice storage warehouse to reduce losses after failing to take off, officials said on Wednesday.
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Part of a vanity airport, built by toppled Sri Lankan strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa, will be used as a rice storage warehouse to reduce losses after failing to take off, officials said on Wednesday.
Rajapaksa International airport, located in the remote farming outpost of Hambantota 250 km from Colombo, has been shunned by airlines after setting planes on a collision course with migrating birds.
The 550-employee airport in the ex-president’s constituency has become a highlight on a “Rajapaksa white elephant tour” run by local guides. It operates at a huge loss and is used only by one airline, low-cost carrier Flydubai, with just a handful of passengers arriving each week.
The near-empty airport has provided a surprise boon to rice farmers, however, after a bumper harvest left them short of shortage space.
“A cargo terminal was released to the state-run rice buyer, Paddy Marketing Board, to store the rice harvest from the Hambantota region,” said an airport official who asked not to be named. “The first truckload of rice arrived on Wednesday and has already unloaded at the empty cargo terminal.” he added.
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