The Hon. Lal Premanath
Hon. Lal Premanath asked the Minister of Plantation and Community Infrastructure about the handling of refuse or reclaimable tea produced in Sri Lankan tea factories, alleging that removal under Tea Board licences is not fully compliant with the law. He questioned whether such tea is being rebranded, sold at the Colombo Tea Auction, or exported illegally, thereby threatening quality assurance and the reputation of Ceylon Tea. He sought details on future measures, including whether exports of refuse tea would be prohibited or placed under Sri Lanka Tea Board supervision.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Question to the Minister of Plantation and Community Infrastructure:
¶ 02 (a) Is he aware that - (i) during the process of tea manufacture, refuse tea/reclaimable tea is also produced within tea factories in Sri Lanka; (ii) such refuse tea is permitted to be removed from the factory premises under a licence issued by the Sri Lanka Tea Board; (iii) but, this removal process is not carried out 100 per cent in compliance with legal provisions; (iv) such refuse tea is rebranded as tea produced in CTC tea factories and is sold in the Colombo Tea Auction; (v) such refuse tea is exported through illegal channels; and (vi) this situation poses a threat to the manufacture of quality-assured tea and tarnishes the reputation of “Ceylon Tea”?
¶ 03 (b) Will he inform this House - (i) the future steps to be taken regarding refuse tea; (ii) whether steps will be taken to prohibit the export of refuse tea; and (iii) if not, whether steps will be taken to carry out the export of refuse tea under the supervision of the Sri Lanka Tea Board?
¶ 04 (c) If not, why?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 8 July 2025 ·No. 1752482630017444 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
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/lk/speeches/10865
Cite as: The Hon. Lal Premanath. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 8 July 2025. No. 1752482630017444. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/10865