The Hon. Chaminda Wijesiri

¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Speaker, if you felt hurt this morning while presiding, I express my regret. You have always steered this House fairly, treating both sides equally. If I erred, I apologize.

¶ 02 There is little new to tell our Minister about the matters in Hon. Hesha Withanage’s motion. For 76 years, the Minister himself fought to get these roads built; today he sits as the Minister in the NPP Government. Hon. Minister, you know why these roads cannot be built. Even when built, in some places movement is later restricted.

¶ 03 As Hon. Ambika MP said, in areas prone to landslides, roads are closed after 7.00 p.m. These are roads built by the Government, yet they are closed and tolls are charged—by whom? The plantation authorities. Due to long-term lease arrangements, even a stone cannot be moved inside an estate. When allocations are made to build toilets for estate residents, funds often lapse back to the Treasury. Please resolve this, Hon. Minister.

¶ 04 Just as you have seen how former Ministers appropriated bungalows, if that process was “legal,” then under this motion your Government can allocate funds properly and build these roads successfully. But even you will find it difficult because these problems stem from long-standing lease structures. As former local authority heads, we fought for years at District Coordinating Committees with Samantha Vidyaratna. Do plantation officials attend when we summon them? No—they disregard us. For a long time, with 99-year leases, power was legally vested in them to control any activity in the estates. That, in my view, is the core problem. Let us resolve it together, beyond race, caste, or religion, and create mechanisms to relieve these people’s hardships.

¶ 05 In our provincial estate areas, the beloved Tamil people have burning issues. Even when we had allocations as part of Government, we could not build certain roads. Not because of anything else, but because some estate officials treated the estates as their fiefdom and blocked essential works for innocent, helpless people. Thank you for the opportunity; I resume my seat.