The Hon. Dilip Wedaarachchi
Hon. Dilip Wedaarachchi moved the customary token reduction of Rs. 10 from the recurrent and capital expenditure under the relevant Heads during the Committee Stage debate on the Appropriation Bill, 2026. He raised concerns over fuel and kerosene concessions for multi-day vessel and outboard motor craft owners, restrictions affecting beach-seine operations, protests by fishing communities, and hardship caused by the decline of related industries such as dried shark, Maldive fish and salmon processing. He stated that he wore black in solidarity with protesting fishers and criticized the Government for not resolving these issues.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Good morning!
¶ 02 Hon. Chairman, at today’s Committee Stage of the Appropriation Bill, 2026 (26.11.2025), I move, as per tradition, that all Recurrent and Capital Expenditures under Heads 151, 290, 196, 186 and 227 (covering the Ministries concerned and their departments and institutions) be reduced by Rs. 10 each.
¶ 03 Regarding the Fisheries Ministry, I wish to raise the multi-day vessel owners’ fuel issue; the outboard motor craft owners’ kerosene (lamp oil) concession that has been cut; and the ban impacting beach-seine (mada-del) operations which has driven fishers to the streets. In Ambalangoda, light-coarse gear operators also protested for their rights. The collapse of industries such as dried shark (karawala), Maldive fish (umbalakada) and salmon processing has created hardship. Today, 50–60% of people engaged in fisheries are protesting near the Presidential Secretariat and the Fisheries Ministry. I wear black today in solidarity with them and in protest at the Government’s failure to resolve these issues.
¶ 04 I appreciate that even our Hon. Prime Minister has come in black today, showing solidarity.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Wednesday, 26 November 2025 ·No. 22993 ·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/22024
Cite as: The Hon. Dilip Wedaarachchi. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 26 November 2025. No. 22993. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/22024