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| Tuesday, 22 July 2003 |
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| Govt. determined to translate ceasefire into a permanent peace - Minister by Uditha Kumarasinghe The Government is working with determination to translate the ongoing ceasefire into a permanent peace after two decades of conflict, Agriculture, Livestock and Samurdhi Minister S. B. Dissanayake said yesterday. The Minister was delivering the keynote address declaring open the First-TIER meeting of the secretaries to the Government in the Ministries/departments concerned with poverty alleviation and social development in SAARC countries under the SAARC Three-TIER mechanism on poverty alleviation held at Hotel Galadari yesterday. The sessions will be held from July 21 to 23. He said the international community has positively responded to the peace initiative by pledging 4.5 billion US dollars for reconstruction and development. "We are now in the process of planning development activities to heal the wounds of the conflict and achieve a two-digit growth rate. Dissanayake said healing the wounds of the war, the Government is also determined to implement a policy package based on the vision and strategy spelt out in the National Policy framework," Regaining Sri Lanka". As the Minister responsible for the implementation of poverty alleviation policy package of the Ranil Wickremesinghe Government, this meeting held in Colombo at this juncture is of great importance to me and my officials. Sri Lanka has a long tradition of implementing policy packages to alleviate the conditions of poverty suffered by the vast majority of our people living in both rural and urban areas. As far back as 1930s, we initiated a highly progressive policy of developing unutilised lands providing them with irrigation facilities and gave lands to landless poor to cultivate and economically empowering them, he said. The Minister said due to free education benefits and free health services, Sri Lanka enjoys the highest Human Development Index in South Asia that even exceeds that of some developed countries. From early 1940s, the people in Sri Lanka enjoyed subsidies on essential consumer items. The farmers enjoyed subsidies on agriculture inputs. He said since 1980s, Janasaviya programme was initiated as a poverty alleviation measure and a safety net for the poor. This was followed by a more comprehensive initiative by the Samurdhi programme which commenced in 1995. "Thus we have implemented poverty alleviation interventions during the past two decades although poverty still remains. This is the challenge faced by us. Therefore it is high time that we rectified the errors of our policies and share the experiences with neighbouring countries in the region as well as those across the world." There is a need to change our strategy from the position of alleviating poverty to achieve a higher quality of life for all our people. We should also think in terms of comprehensive development in villages rather than continue to engage in ad hoc development, the Minister said. Samurdhi Ministry Secretary Dr. Kumari Nawaratne, Samurdhi Director General Dr. Sunil Jayantha Nawaratne and the Director of SAARC Secretariat C. A. H. M. Wijeratne also spoke. |
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