Deyata Kirula tops two million visitors

Lakshmi de Silva

The Deyata Kirula exhibition at Pallekelle, Kandy is breaking records of crowds visiting exhibitions even in Colombo. The number of visitors topped two million by noon yesterday the number coming to view the exhibition was increasing every day, Nation Building Ministry media spokesman Kapila Ariyaratne told the Daily News.

Speaking from the exhibition grounds, he said personnel managing the exhibition were finding it difficult to cope with the crowds waiting outside in queues from morning to come in to the exhibition grounds.

There are more than 1,000 stalls. Among them 32 are for the Nation Building Ministry, seven out of these Gama Neguma stalls with their accent on rural development programs spelling out the main areas of the Mahinda Chintana and Mahinda Chintana Idiri Dekma policies aimed at development of the rural sector with community participation. A majority of the visitors to the exhibition evinced a keen interest in the village and rural sector development projects that could be seen in these seven stalls.

Nearly 500,000 people had visited the Gama Neguma during the first two days, he said.

Ariyaratne said these stalls showed the development of the villages from the ancient times to their present status, how foreign assistance was being utilized for development and creation of self- employment forms as well as the livelihood programs of the Internally Displaced Persons with special emphasis on their resettlement process, rural sector products such as handloom material, handicraft and preserved food including dried fish from Mannar.

There was a high demand for these products and stalls were running out of stock and new stocks had to be ordered, he said.

The rural radio station Gemi Diriya and Internet connection spanning about 7,000 villages were also among the stalls that were drawing crowds interested in learning about the rural awakening programs implemented by the Government. He said the stalls depicted the reduction of poverty among the plantation sector people witnessed due to these people going away from alcoholism under the Mathata Thitha policy.

Among the other popular stalls were the Armed Forces stalls that exhibited the arms and ammunition seized from the terrorists. The Agriculture and Finance Ministry stall and the media stalls were the other popular attractions at the exhibition. The Deyata Kirula Exhibition is open from 9.00 a.m. to midnight daily and will continue till Friday.