The Hon. Sudath Balagalla

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Chairperson of Committees, this is our Government’s 2025 Budget—the maiden Budget—and this is my first speech. What should we focus on in this debate? The Opposition keeps asking whether we have allocated money for this or that. Why did we have to allocate funds like this? Because the rulers who governed this country in the past did not answer the specific questions relevant to our people. Therefore, they now have to ask us about those issues. Under past systems of governance, our whole society was plunged into disaster. Fathers who abused their own children were produced. Mothers who killed their own children and dumped them in garbage bins were produced. Society was flooded with heroin and other narcotics. A man could not live safely. Our entire education system was destroyed; our health system was broken; and now they ask us whether we have built hospitals in estates. Those who governed for 76 years now have to ask whether we built estate hospitals. The entire public service was broken; bribery and corruption spread; officials were used to cover up theft. The whole industrial system was broken and privatised; 2,500 years of agricultural history was ruined; the beautiful environment was polluted; even animals had no habitat left. So, they now ask whether this Budget has funds for these matters.

¶ 02 Our Government’s responsibility is to rebuild this society that was destroyed. We said in our main policy—“A Prosperous Country, a Beautiful Life”—we will create a prosperous nation and give people a dignified life.

¶ 03 Consider education. I represent Mahiyanganaya in Badulla District. There is a village called Kalukele. To reach that village you must walk five kilometres uphill. That school has only 13 children and classes only up to Grade 5. To go further, children must descend five kilometres downhill and then walk another two and a half kilometres to a school. If there is a bus, fine; otherwise they must walk seven and a half kilometres. That is the schooling in a country built over 76 years! They cannot even hold inter-house sports. There are no teachers; no non-academic staff. The only thing distributed equally in education has been the question papers for Grade 5 Scholarship, O/L and A/L. Everything else is unequal. Our parents wanted to educate their children but you did not build the background. Your children never attended these remote schools, so you never felt the pain when there were no teachers.

¶ 04 Health is the same. In our village, a person went blind after an injection. But these rulers never felt the shortcomings in health because their mothers never queued in hospital pharmacies. They lived above the people and thus never felt these realities.

¶ 05 These rulers destroyed agriculture with 2,500 years of history. In the past, Uva-Wellassa had 30,000 tanks and hundreds of thousands of paddy fields—a land finally subjugated by the British; destroyed after the 1818 rebellion; the tank system was never restored. Now our National People’s Power Government is answering for agriculture. For farmers, three things matter: water, land, and seed; the fourth is price. Past rulers gave some water, land, seed—but never the right to decide the price. Now we have set a margin with a paddy price of Rs. 120 per kilo. There was uproar that it would not be possible, that prices would be Rs. 1,300–1,400. But in Mahaweli C zone, paddy is now bought at Rs. 110 by the rice mafia. The Government will pay a Rs. 120 margin. Stocks will come into our stores; we will make the country secure in rice. We can do it.

¶ 06 We will also make agriculture an organic, sustainable sector. Past Presidents tried to sell 65,000 acres in Wellassa. We fought for 17 years, went to court, and protected that land. Now we will give life to that land and make it fertile with the blood, sweat and tears of our people. We will not run this Government in your old way.

¶ 07 They now talk about animals—leopards and elephants. In my three GN divisions there are 38 wild elephants. Last week one person was killed; three days later another lost an arm; four days later another was killed. We too love animals, but we are people suffering from them. We must rebuild their habitats. Funds have been allocated in this Budget to restore reserves with water and food for animals. Animals do not come to villages by choice; they come because they have nothing to eat. They poach on our lands—just as past rulers poached on our country.

¶ 08 We in the NPP are ready to rebuild this country. Some are already fearful and say in three months we have not raised or done this or that. Why?