Govt's aim to uplift village economy

COLOMBO: "Today we are living in a very competitive capitalist world. If we are to Teach the market, there should be quality in our products. If there is quality in the oil that is extracted using this machine, our producers may be able to win even international markets.

To achieve that I hope to coordinate with the Sri Lanka Standards Institution which is working under my Ministry. The officers there will enlighten you about the quality that you have to have from plucking cloves, collecting them to extracting of oil from this machine," said Prof. Tissa Vitarana, Minister of Ssience and Technology.

He was addressing a gathering at a ceremony which took place recently to introduce a new oil extracting machine which can be used to extract cloves, cardamon, nutmeg, pepper and cinnamon. The technology to develop this machine was provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology, spending around Rs. 5 million.

He said: "What we mean as development is only to provide a service to village. As a government we spend an enormous amount of money to provide the infrastructure facilities in a village through such service. By providing infrastructure facilities what we should expect is uplifting of the economy of village. This is the main theme of development".