Agriculture to be encouraged

Priyanka Kurugala

“I am also a farmer. Therefore I hope to visit the North once in two months to assist in agriculture activities in these areas”, Agrarian Services and Wildlife Minister S M Chandrasena said.

According to the Mahinda Chinthana the government is providing fertilizer subsidy from 2005. By now the Northern people also can enjoy this benefit.

The minister was addressing the inaugural ceremony of the reconstructed Agrarian Services Centre of Kaithadi in Jaffna recently. To reconstruct this centre the government spent Rs 25 million.

By now the government has taken steps to provide a fertilizer subsidy of Rs 1,200 for crops other than paddy.

Agrarian Services and Wildlife Minister S M Chandrasena said that, if the agricultural policies of the United Front Government had not been destroyed by the UNP government in 1977, the youth in the North who were engaged in agriculture would have never taken to arms.

‘Hector Kobbekaduwa who was the Agriculture Minister of the time had launched an agricultural programme covering the entire country in 1970.

‘He motivated people to cultivate every inch of the country under this programme,’ he said. People who lived in the Northern and the Eastern Provinces were able to earn a good income through agriculture.

During that period leaders who went to the North were warmly welcomed by them, he stated.

Agriculture was destroyed with the open economy. After that the youth in this area loss their source of income and became involved in terrorism. Due to thirty years of war the Northern people lost every thing.

They were unable to continue their agricultural pursuits. However President Mahinda Rajapaksa rescued these people by destroying terrorism, he said.