Author: TELO Admin

Claiming that nothing progressive has taken place with regard to the issues faced by the Tamil community and estate workers under the leadership of President Ranil Wickremesinghe, Opposition Parliamentarian and Tamil Progressive Alliance Leader Mano Ganesan said that the former should “walk the talk” concerning the same.

Speaking to The Daily Morning, Ganesan said that the President has been making various statements from time to time that he would take steps to resolve the issues faced by the Tamil community and estate workers. “Wickremesinghe has been talking a lot to local and foreign media about this matter. He even said that he would resolve the Tamil national issue by Independence Day (4 February). Nothing progressive has been done. So, I tell him to walk the talk without merely making statements.” He also said that the Wickremesinghe led Government had not paid attention to the issues faced by the estate workers, particularly in the upcountry areas. “There are many underprivileged and undernourished families among the estate workers. Various surveys have proven it. We have requested the Government to ensure that such families are included in the social security beneficiaries’ lists, but it is not happening. This is very unfortunate. Can the Government not understand that there is no way for them to survive?,” he queried.

President Wickremesinghe had been pledging to resolve the issues faced by the Tamil community, particularly in the North and the East, and the estate sector workers. The frequent issues that they face include the detention of certain individuals under the Prevention of Terrorism (Temporary Provisions) Act, the occupation of their lands by the military forces and the non-implementation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution. The President also had several rounds of discussions with Tamil MPs regarding the resolution of such issues.

When former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa abruptly banned chemical fertiliser imports in mid-2021, he turned Sri Lanka into a case study for how not to do organic farming.

The restrictions — which caught agricultural officials and farmers by surprise — sparked chaos in the agricultural sector. The lack of alternatives led to sharp drops in output, with harvests of rice and other crops falling. This, in turn, stoked a severe economic crisis, which culminated in the country’s default on $40bn in foreign debt last year. The once-fertile island is now dependent on food grants and imports to manage a hunger crisis.

Even though Rajapaksa reversed the ban about six months later, fertiliser supplies in Sri Lanka never normalised. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 pushed up prices globally, while a lack of foreign currency in Sri Lanka led to severe shortages and rationing of imported fertiliser. A bag of urea that cost Rs1,500 ($4.65) shot up to as much as Rs40,000 before falling to a subsidised price of Rs10,000 ($124), says Ahilan Kadirgamar, a sociologist at the University of Jaffna.

Farm organisers and agricultural experts in Sri Lanka say that — even if many farmers have no intention of ever going “organic” again — the disruption to chemical fertiliser supplies has highlighted the importance of finding alternatives to help insulate them from future shocks. And a number of small-scale initiatives and pilots to explore those alternatives are now under way across the country.

“What farmers are doing on the fertiliser front is they’re experimenting,” says Kadirgamar, who is also chair of a rural co-operative federation. “They’re trying to use less fertiliser, or a mix of organic compost and fertiliser, but there’s no sort of conclusive direction in terms of how they’re going to go forward.”

Some of these schemes predate Rajapaksa’s fertiliser ban. Kadirgamar says that four co-operatives in Sri Lanka’s north started running small organic compost factories from 2018 onwards, using ingredients such as dried leaves and cow dung to create natural fertilisers.

The idea was never to replace chemical fertilisers, Kadirgamar says, but to reduce dependence on them. He adds, however, that demand form alternatives is trending higher as farmers try to offset the high cost of fertiliser, and some co-operatives are considering producing more organic compost. “From the farmers’ point of view, it’s just about survival,” he says.

While on the campaign trail to become president in 2019, Rajapaksa had railed against the dangers of chemical fertilisers to human health and the environment. But few expected the import ban, which some critics say was motivated not by environmental concerns but by an ill-advised attempt to stem falling foreign currency reserves.

If that was the aim, it failed, and the country’s bankruptcy fuelled mass protests that forced Rajapaksa out of office in July last year. The turmoil attracted worldwide attention, and was seen in some quarters as a cautionary tale about the risks of rethinking farming — with Tucker Carlson, then a host on Fox News in the US, calling Sri Lanka a “victim of ESG”.

JM Soorasena, who grew up in a farming family and is now president of the country’s Agriculture and Environment Professional’s Cooperative Society, acknowledges Rajapaksa’s move was damaging for advocates of sustainable farming methods, like himself.

“They didn’t have any good plan, they didn’t have any infrastructure,” he says of the government, adding that officials still “don’t know how to practice” organic farming.

Shamila Rathnasooriya, a co-ordinator with rural non-profit organisation Movement for National Land and Agricultural Reform (Monlar) says that, after the ban: “Farmers didn’t know how to do organic agriculture and they were seeing a drop in yield. Due to this experience, farmers don’t believe in organic agriculture.”

Monlar is now trying to change that, and works with about 2,000 farmers across the country to teach them alternative farming methods.

It distributes seeds for crops such as suwandel, an indigenous variety of rice, and green gram or vegetables that Rathnasooriya says are well suited to the country’s climate. It then trains farmers in organic farming methods such as preparing jeevamrutham, a fertiliser made from cow dung, cow urine, sugar and flour that is used in neighbouring India.

Rathnasooriya says Monlar encourages participants to start by testing the techniques on half an acre of their land, and to expand it if they see good results. If successful, he says, farmers enjoy a “similar amount of harvest, and they see the multiplication and improvement of micro-biodiversity”.

Ultimately, though, these efforts remain small scale. Kadirgamar says there is little sign that industrialised agricultural businesses in Sri Lanka are following suit, even if the ban also showed “they need to be much more careful in [fertiliser] use”.

Either way, Soorasena says the future of fertilisers in Sri Lanka will be tied not to sustainability, but to politics. With nearly a third of the country’s workforce engaged in agriculture, subsidising chemical fertilisers is a useful vote winner, he argues. “It’s not economical, but political.”

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Power & Energy Kanchana Wijesekera said that 450 fuel stations have been categorized into 3 separate groups of 150 to be made available to the new foreign fuel service operators.

At the meeting with the owners & management of fuel stations, it was revealed that the new foreign fuel service operators will enter the Sri Lankan fuel market within a month.

Sri Lanka’s Minister of Power & Energy Kanchana Wijesekera met with owners & management of fuel stations at the Foundation Institute in Colombo on Thursday (4) morning.

The minister tweeted that he met the first two groups of owners & management of Fuel stations that will be made available to new suppliers.

Both sides had discussed dealership allocation to new suppliers, categorizing mechanism, new agreements, pricing formulas, benefits of new suppliers, dealer margins, government policy & regulations.

Sri Lanka awarded retail fuel licenses to three foreign firms, namely, China’s Sinopec, United Petroleum Australia and US-based RM Parks, which is in collaboration with Shell.

The cabinet granted approval to allocate 150 dealer-operated fuel stations for each new supplier, and for A further 50 fuel stations to be established by each selected company.

President Ranil Wickramasinghe left Bandaranaike International Airport at Katunayake early Thursday (04) for England to attend the coronation ceremony of King Charles III.

Eight other people have also left with the President and they have left for Dubai first at 03.15 this morning on Emirates flight EK-649.

The group will leave for England later in another flight from Dubai.

The coronation of King Charles III is scheduled to take place at 11 am on Saturday (06) at Westminster Abbey.

President Ranil Wickremesinghe will participate in this coronation ceremony on an invitation of the British royal family.

After the coronation ceremony, the President is scheduled to return to the island on the morning of the 8th.