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Sri Lanka Army

Defender of the Nation

02nd October 2022 11:48:40 Hours

Commandos' Roles Lauded & Philanthropic Family Gifts Ancestral Land for 12 Members in Commando Family

Highly appreciative of the Commandos' unmatched and daring role as elite defenders of the motherland and cognizant of their valuable contribution to the country, members of an ancestral family from Kalutara as Good Samaritans gifted a land patch of 148 perches for distribution among most deserving in the Commando Regiment (CR).

The land property, worth over Rs 30 million, inherited from their father and ancestors in Payagala, Kalutara was thus jointly gifted to the CR by philanthropists of the same family, Mrs Gaya Jayasinghe, Attorney at Law, former Chief Legal Officer in the Bank of Ceylon, Medical Specialist, Dr Okawas Chandrabhanu De Alwis and Mrs Pushpa Weerasingha, a scholar-researcher resident in Sydney, Australia for distribution among 1 Officer,10 soldiers of the Commando Regiment and 1 Civil Staffer working in the CR Regimental HQ. All those recipients were hitherto without a piece of land to call their own.

Lieutenant General Vikum Liyanage, Commander of the Army as the Chief Guest this afternoon (27) invited those beneficiaries to the Army Headquarters and gave away 12 deeds of those partioned land plots to them for construction of own houses, together with representative generous givers.

Lieutenant General Vikum Liyanage told the donors that a gift of this nature would inevitably boost the morale of hardworking Army members whose duty commitments are demanding and strenuous. He expressed his gratitude and deep appreciation to the donors and praised them for their exceptional gesture of thoughtfulness for a worthy cause.

The noble intention of gifting their land for brave soldiers was mooted by Mrs Gaya Jayasingha in the year 2019 when she was serving as the Chief Legal Officer in the BOC, and implementation of the project by the CR Regimental HQ was accordingly coordinated by Brigadier Lalantha Gamage (Retd) who around the same period worked as the Chief Security Officer of the BOC. However, unforeseen circumstances and outbreak of COVID -19 epidemic in the country held over its progress until recent times.

During the brief distribution ceremony at the Army HQ, Commander of the Army was joined by Mrs Gaya Jayasinghe, Attorney at Law and Medical Specialist, Dr Okawas Chandrabhanu De Alwis for distribution of those deeds to the beneficiaries.

Full of praise to their generosity, both Lieutenant General Vikum Liyanage and Major General AKGKU Gnanarathna ndc psc, Colonel of the Commando Regiment and Commander, 1 Corps afterward awarded special mementoes to the donors as tokens of appreciation before the donors and the beneficiaries sat for a group photograph.

At the end of the programme, Major General AKGKU Gnanarathna ndc psc a expressed the Commando Regiment's and the Army's gratitude to the donors for their thoughtfulness and generosity towards other sentient beings who defend the country.

Major General TJ Kodithuwakku RWP RSP ndu, Chief of Staff, Major General MGWWWMCB Wickramasinghe RWP RSP ndu psc, Adjutant General and a few senior officers were associated with the brief occasion.