The Hon. Hesha Withanage Ankumbura Arachchi
Hesha Withanage Ankumbura Arachchi raised concern that reliable data on out-of-school children are not maintained despite Sri Lanka’s free education system. He asked whether the Ministry of Education would introduce a targeted welfare mechanism for children who leave school due to economic hardship, noting problems in the administration of the Aswasuma welfare programme.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, I thank the Hon. Prime Minister. It is regrettable that data are unavailable for earlier years; a country with free education should at least maintain reliable figures on out-of-school children. If we cannot even maintain such a list, how can we ensure justice to these children?
¶ 02 My first supplementary: Many children leave school due to economic hardship—lack of bus fare, clothing, or books. The “Aswasuma” welfare programme operates irregularly; eligible people miss benefits, while ineligible receive them. Can the Ministry of Education intervene to institute at least a targeted welfare mechanism for children who do not attend school due to economic reasons, so they can continue their education?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Wednesday, 10 June 2026 ·No. 23707 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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- 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/21478
Cite as: The Hon. Hesha Withanage Ankumbura Arachchi. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 10 June 2026. No. 23707. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/21478