The Hon. Jeevan Thondaman

¶ 01 The workers! But everybody is afraid to speak against them. Why? Because they are some of the most powerful lobbyists in the country. Apart from that, nobody wants to hurt the “Ceylon Tea” brand, but honestly speaking, the “Ceylon Tea” brand does not need to survive on exploitation. That is something that we must come to terms with.

¶ 02 Many people here have a false notion and a false perspective of Jeevan Thondaman, my legacy or our party. I understand that. I am a product of nepotism; I am not saying that I am not. But, at the same time, I do have the backing of not just my community, but also of my voters because I have spoken for them day in, day out in this Parliament; I have stood by them at every given chance. And for that, we have been called “opportunists”; we have been called many names.

¶ 03 As per what the Hon. Prime Minister said, even in relation to educational reforms, history should not be neglected. Those who do not know history, especially their own history, would cease to exist. We have gone through that for 30 years and I do not think we can go through that again.

¶ 04 Madam, I just want to raise one last matter. As far as all these educational reforms are concerned, you all mentioned earlier that you had done public consultations prior to coming into power. From what we could see, we do welcome these reforms. However, implementing them is going to be the issue. Of course, you do have our fullest support in their implementation, but, at the same time, there needs to be a complete system change within the plantation sector. If you were to look at what is actually happening there, you would notice that there is only 30 per cent access to quality education in the plantation sector and that it is mainly because we lack teachers. Earlier, we brought in an assistant teacher programme, about which there was some criticism. Why? Because we were taking in students who dropped out of A/Ls, giving them teacher training and posting them as assistant teachers for two years and then, they would become fully-fledged teachers. But that was criticised. The biggest criticism came from the graduates. But the truth of the matter is, whether you like it or not, when there is a community which is finding it extremely difficult to have access to quality education, just because of historical injustices, then they should be given a leeway.

¶ 05 That is equity. We are not asking for equality. When you have one person who is fit and healthy and another who is unable to walk, you cannot tell both of them to climb three flights of steps; that is not possible. To make a long story short, we have started the race 30 years later. We are not asking you to slow down, but just asking to help us out.

¶ 06 The reason I am saying this is because the Government needs to take control of what is inside the plantations. For example, take the 456 estate medical offices, where there are no drugs and doctors; there is absolutely nothing there. Therefore, the Government needs to take that matter up. There had been a Cabinet Paper passed on that, but, unfortunately, it has not seen implementation. Similarly, in schools, at the end of the day, there needs to be a complete revamp because many teachers do not want to come to the estate schools since it is difficult for them to live there, which is understandable. You cannot force them to teach in a very difficult situation, but there has to be an alternative.

¶ 07 Now, I make a humble request, especially to the Hon. Minister of Women and Child Affairs. Hon. Minister, when I was the Minister, we started a programme along with the ADB, where we were giving free morning meals for about 1,197 crèches, child daycare centres. We repaired about 600 of them and there were about 22,000 children. That programme came to a halt. If that could be revived again — that was not done through funding of the Government of Sri Lanka, but through funding of the World Bank and the ADB — it would give more importance to social protection. Secondly, we did a programme with the Indian Government and I am very sure that the Indian Government, too, would be keen on doing that. We had a STEM teacher training programme for science, technology, engineering and maths. We had 19 teachers coming down from Tamil Nadu and they went to all the schools across 13 districts. We created three centres and they trained thousands of teachers and also the children on STEM education. So, that is what is needed.

¶ 08 Lastly, I would also like to inform all of you that vocational training is absolutely necessary — I do agree with that — but, at the same time, vocational training should not become an incentive to drop out from school. That is also a very realistic issue which we are not able to control. Today, the highest number of school dropouts in the estate sector are girls. That is not because of anything, but because of a very simple issue. Their mothers are migrant workers; they go abroad to work leaving their daughters at home with their fathers or with an adult. But, unfortunately, the fathers do not know how to plait the daughters’ hair and because of that, they refuse to send them to school. Also, the schools do not have bathrooms. Therefore, it has become very difficult for girls to go to school.

¶ 09 I am bringing these matters up because they are more practical problems.

¶ 10 Now, educational reforms are there, which we do welcome. But when it comes to reforms, what I have learnt is, you can put whatever you want on paper, but until and unless there is a visible change, it would actually be very difficult to uplift our community.

¶ 11 Madam, there is just one last thing I would like to request from the Government. I think two days ago, there had been an accident in Uda Radella Estate. Forty-three individuals of six families have been affected because a boulder had collapsed and right now, the company is supporting them. If there is anything that the Government could do to intervene and sort that out, we would be grateful for that, too.

¶ 12 I just want a clarification on one last thing. If anybody from the Government could tell me whether you have decided to give the plantation workers a wage of Rs. 1,700, Rs. 2,000 or Rs. 1,350, I would be grateful.

¶ 13 Thank you.