The Hon. (Dr.) Harini Amarasuriya

¶ 01 Hon. Speaker, there is a small contradiction in the Hon. Member’s question. Treating education as a commercial commodity to earn foreign revenue is one policy discourse; ensuring access and quality in higher education for developing our human resources is another. As a Government, our policy is that higher education opportunities must be expanded—equitably and with quality—aligned to students’ capabilities, not financial capacity. On KDU, under the current Act, there is no provision to admit civilian students. Amendments would be required. Society is facing serious issues due to ad hoc decisions taken by past governments. We now have to resolve these one by one.

¶ 02 As for KDU’s core purpose, the land was granted by Sir John Kotelawala for training military cadets. For various reasons, the intake has reduced. On that point, the Hon. Ravi Karunanayake should strongly support us: we propose to develop KDU into an international-level military defence university in line with that mission, with necessary legislative amendments and investment, and in a manner lawful, equitable in education opportunities, and not a burden to the Ministry of Defence.