The Hon. Jeevan Thondaman
Jeevan Thondaman raised an incident in Hatton involving schoolchildren from Nuwara Eliya District who were allegedly abused and forcibly removed from a bus by its conductor. Referring to the Prime Minister’s comments on safety in transport, he asked the Prime Minister and Minister Bimal Rathnayake to take note and act against the conductor, warning against any recurrence of discriminatory treatment historically faced by hill-country communities.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Chairperson, the Hon. Prime Minister very rightly stated that safety for children and women must be ensured in transport.
¶ 02 I wish to highlight an incident today in Hatton. I request the Hon. Prime Minister and Hon. Minister Bimal Rathnayake to take note. Some schoolchildren in Nuwara Eliya District had boarded a 0608 bus. An argument occurred with the bus conductor, who then behaved improperly—used abusive language and forcibly ejected the children, saying, “This is my bus; it’s my wish whom to take in or send out. Get out!”
¶ 03 Hon. Prime Minister and Hon. Minister Bimal Rathnayake, I must say this: fifty years ago, when racism rose in this country, innocent hill-country people faced similar treatment—being thrown out of buses, not allowed into stations, and so on. If we are returning to that, it is a problem. I am not blaming you or the Government, but I trust you will take action against this conductor.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Friday, 7 March 2025 ·No. 1743066559006904 ·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.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/17965
Cite as: The Hon. Jeevan Thondaman. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 7 March 2025. No. 1743066559006904. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/17965