Category: News

The government has decided to remove the existing legal barriers for individuals who fled the country during the conflict with the LTTE and have been residing in India as refugees, in order to facilitate their return to Sri Lanka.

Minister of Public Security and Parliamentary Affairs Ananda Wijepala has said steps have already been taken to amend the existing immigration and emigration laws to facilitate the process.

During the conflict with the LTTE, a large number of people residing in the Northern Province fled to Tamil Nadu in India, and are residing in refugee camps.

Minister Wijepala noted that the existing immigration and emigration laws have become an obstacle for their return, and therefore attention has been drawn to amending those laws.

A Cabinet paper in this regard is expected to be submitted shortly to obtain approval for the initiative.

Meanwhile, three individuals, including a toddler, who arrived in the country from India via sea, have been taken into custody in Talaimannar.

According to Police, they had traveled to Sri Lanka from Rameswaram.

Police stated that the group consisted of a 24-year-old couple and their toddler.

Preliminary investigations revealed that they had fled to India by boat in May 2023.

In a gesture of sports diplomacy and cultural exchange, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka has donated five 12-person international-standard dragon boats to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

The donation was formally made on Saturday at the 2025 Dragon Boat Festival China-Sri Lanka Friendship Cup Dragon Boat Championship.

The championship, held at the Diyawanna Oya Amateur Rowing Association of Sri Lanka (ARASL) Rowing Center in Kotte, a suburb of Colombo, featured a diverse field, including school and university teams, the Sri Lankan Armed Forces, and five teams from Jaffna comprising 75 young athletes, a significant representation for northern regional participation. Altogether 22 teams from Sri Lanka, featuring over 310 athletes, and two from China took part.

Speaking to Xinhua, Minister of Youth Affairs and Sports, S.K. Gamage, expressed gratitude for China’s support.

Gamage emphasized that events like the Dragon Boat Festival are crucial for deepening the longstanding friendship between Sri Lanka and China. “We have a long history of friendship with China. We want to improve and continue it,” he said.

Addressing the gathering, Gamage added, “This is not merely a sports event, it is a powerful symbol of friendship, culture, and cooperation between our two nations.”

Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka Qi Zhenhong spoke of the global significance of the Dragon Boat Festival and the values it embodies.

“Dragon boat racing is one of the oldest and most culturally significant traditions of the festival. It symbolizes teamwork, perseverance, and the collective pursuit of universal values such as peace, development, and justice,” he said.

Qi described this championship as “a new starting point to further deepen sports and cultural exchanges between China and Sri Lanka and to enhance mutual understanding and friendship between our peoples.”

Rear Admiral HNS Perera, president of the National Association for Canoeing and Kayaking in Sri Lanka, described the event as a bridge between tradition and modernity.

“This is more than a sporting event; it is a celebration of culture, heritage, and most importantly, friendship,” he said, adding that the boats donated by China would greatly assist the development of water sports in Sri Lanka, particularly for youth in under-resourced regions like Jaffna.

People take part in the 2025 Dragon Boat Festival China-Sri Lanka Friendship Cup Dragon Boat Championship in Kotte, Sri Lanka, on May 31, 2025. In a gesture of sports diplomacy and cultural exchange, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka has donated five 12-person international-standard dragon boats to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

The donation was formally made on Saturday at the 2025 Dragon Boat Festival China-Sri Lanka Friendship Cup Dragon Boat Championship

People take part in the 2025 Dragon Boat Festival China-Sri Lanka Friendship Cup Dragon Boat Championship in Kotte, Sri Lanka, on May 31, 2025. In a gesture of sports diplomacy and cultural exchange, the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka has donated five 12-person international-standard dragon boats to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.

The donation was formally made on Saturday at the 2025 Dragon Boat Festival China-Sri Lanka Friendship Cup Dragon Boat Championship.

Hundreds of people from Sri Lanka’s historically oppressed Malaiyaha (hill country) community held demonstrations to emphasize their basic rights as citizens of the country.

“We demand that Malaiyaha Tamil people be accepted as free and equal Sri Lankan citizens,” said Shalini Manori, a 54-year-old tea estate worker, who participated in the June 1 demonstration in Hatton town in the Nuwara Eliya District of Central Province.

The majority of the community’s 1.5 million people work in tea and rubber estates, contributing to the country’s crucial foreign exchange earnings as Sri Lanka accounts for close to 20 percent of global tea exports.

But its tea workers are landless and the poorest, and live under a constant threat of forced displacement as they lack land and housing rights, their leaders say. Most worker-families live on the estates in 400-square-foot rooms in abject poverty.

The demonstrators carried banners and raised slogans with the beating of drums to seek “assured rights” to housing and land, a living wage, protection of the law, and equal compensation for male and female workers.

More than 50 percent of tea plantation workers in the country are women from the Malaiyaha Tamil community.

“Women are overworked and underpaid,” Manori told UCA News, adding that the low salaries in the tea estates force them to take on extra work on weekends in farms, brick-kilns and other such informal sectors.

She said that women workers are often assigned backbreaking and low-valued tasks, such as tea leaf plucking and bush pruning, while they are already overburdened at home with child rearing and domestic chores.

The Malaiyaha Tamils are descendants of Indian indentured laborers who were brought in by the British to work on coffee, tea, and rubber plantations. Their socio-economic exclusion, marked by a prolonged period of statelessness and disenfranchisement, has led to poor human development indicators for the community.

The community has the worst figures for poverty in the country, with widespread child malnourishment, high rates of anemia among women, alcoholism among men, and low educational attainment.

In 2023, the Malaiyaha community undertook a nearly 300-kilometer journey, calling for recognition as free and equal citizens in the country.

Menaka Kandasamy of the Ceylon Workers Red Flag Union said the government has approved an increase in the daily wage of workers from 1,000 rupees to 1,700 rupees (US$5.66).

“But most of the estate companies do not pay even that to their workers,” she told UCA News.

Kandy-based activist Nilushi Synthiya said the average daily wage paid is around 1,350 rupees, but a family of four spends more than that due to the high cost of living in Sri Lanka.

Synthiya criticized the tea estate companies “for citing financial losses during wage negotiations, though they continue to record enormous profits.”

She also emphasized the urgent need to grant land and housing rights to the hill people and to accord them equal linguistic status to their Tamil language.

Global rights organizations, including Amnesty International, the World Alliance for Citizen Participation, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, and Front Line Defenders, have expressed concern for the Malaiyaha community.

Port City Colombo last Friday commemorated the formal handover of office space to key anchor tenants with a special ceremony.

The event was graced by the presence of China Communications Construction Group (CCCC) Deputy General Manager Chen Zhong, Colombo Port City Economic Commission (CPCEC) Chairman Harsha Amarasekera, China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) Chairman Bai Yinzhan, Finance, Economic Stabilisation and National Policies Ministry Director General – Corporate Affairs Dr. Sulakshana Jayawardena, and CHEC Port City Colombo Ltd. Managing Director Xiong Hongfeng.

The occasion was attended by an esteemed gathering of CCCC and CHEC dignitaries, and tenants who have leased out space at the Business Centre.

The Business Centre at Port City Colombo, which officially broke ground in March 2024, is a premier IT and business park that empowers businesses to operate, exchange knowledge, and drive new advancements in their respective fields. The development encompasses nine low-rise office buildings, with a dedicated IT hub and a commercial hub. 80% of the office space at the Business Centre has been officially leased out to Authorised Persons, who have been registered and approved by the CPCEC to conduct business within the Colombo Port City Special Economic Zone (SEZ).

The Business Centre represents a $ 5 million Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by CHEC, the subsidiary of CCCC. Being a Fortune 500 company employing over 120,000 people across 145 countries and regions, CCCC has contributed significantly towards instrumental construction and development projects through CHEC since 1998 in Sri Lanka, with Port City Colombo being one of the Group’s most strategic ventures.

CCCC aims to support the further evolution of Port City Colombo into a thriving regional ecosystem that will attract FDI, foster knowledge exchange and innovation, and contribute to increased job creation potential in Sri Lanka. CHEC, the primary project developer, has invested approximately $ 1.4 billion in Port City Colombo – the project is Sri Lanka’s largest FDI and Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to date.

The handover of office space at the Business Centre embodies the commencement of operationalised commercial activity within the Colombo Port City SEZ. Promoting strengthened investor confidence in the Asian region, this movement showcases the progressive regulatory framework of the Colombo Port City SEZ in action.

On-boarded tenants, who will be setting up operations at the Business Centre as registered Authorised Persons, would benefit from the SEZ’s fiscal and non-fiscal incentives, whilst they contribute to Port City Colombo’s growing business ecosystem. This epitomises the landmark opportunity for further economic growth and development in Sri Lanka, with Port City Colombo being its key strategic driver.

With the Business Centre soon to commence operations, Port City Colombo takes one additional step towards becoming a sought-after destination for business, investments, and leisure in the heart of South Asia.

Despite its previous stand regarding privatization of state assets, the government, led by the National People’s Power (NPP), is seeking to call for Expression of Interest (EoI) to open up the Mattala International Airport (MIA) for private investors for operation of its services in different categories, an official said.

The MIA, funded by China EXIM Bank, has stoked controversy since its opening in 2013 due to a low number of flights and persistent financial losses. The successive governments tried to privatize the airport. The previous government tried to hand over the airport to Shaurya Aeronautics (Pvt) Ltd. of India and Airports of Regions Management Company of Russia for 30 years.

However, the move was rescinded later since, under the Civil Aviation Authority Act, certain services cannot be transferred out. Instead, they should be held under the purview of the Civil Aviation Authority of Sri Lanka (CAASL) which is a government entity.

The current NPP government is now trying to seek private sector investments for running airport activities such as passenger management, maintenance and repair and cargo handling.

Asked for a comment, Deputy Minister of Ports and Civil Aviation Janitha Kodituwakku confirmed that a Cabinet paper would be submitted soon seeking approval for EoI to be called for private sector investments in the operation of the airport in different categories. He said even the India – Russia joint venture that was chosen in the past could respond once EoI was called for.

He said the airport is currently used mainly for chartered flights carrying tourists.

“There are no scheduled flights as such. We handle around 150,000 passengers annually,” he said.

Chairman of Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Sagara Kotakadeniya said that the management of an airport could be opened to the private sector with the consent of the subject minister, but not alienation. He said areas such as security and air traffic control should be with the state entity, and, in this case, the CAASL.

Russian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Levan S. Jagaryan, has called on Sri Lanka to demonstrate genuine interest and take tangible steps if it wishes to join the BRICS alliance, noting that mere expressions of intent are not sufficient.

Speaking at an event organised by the Bandaranaike International Centre for International Studies in Colombo, the Ambassador reflected on the ongoing conversations around Sri Lanka’s potential engagement with BRICS—a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and other new members. Responding to a journalist’s question on the subject, Jagaryan revealed that this was not the first time he had been asked about Sri Lanka’s possible entry into the group. He noted that Russia and China have consistently shown support for Sri Lanka on the global stage, but from his perspective, there has been limited reciprocal interest or initiative from Colombo regarding BRICS.

Recalling a key moment in diplomatic engagement, the Ambassador said, “On 1 October last year, I met with President Anura Kumara Dissanayake and handed him an official invitation from Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend the BRICS summit. I spoke through an interpreter, and while I’m unsure about the accuracy of the translation, the President explained he would be unable to visit Russia due to the upcoming General Elections.”

He emphasised that BRICS is a multilateral platform and any new membership requires the consensus of all current member states. It is not a process driven by a single country, and Sri Lanka would need to undergo a series of formal steps to be considered.

“I haven’t seen concrete moves from Sri Lanka yet,” Jagaryan added, urging the Government to show clear intent through action if it is serious about pursuing BRICS membership.

Minister of Public Administration, Provincial Councils and Local Government, Professor Chandana Aberathne, said that only 150 local government institutions will have the opportunity to form power tomorrow.

The official term of local government institutions is set to begin tomorrow.

Extraordinary Gazette Notifications listing the members elected to local government institutions across all administrative districts were issued yesterday.

The Minister further stated that parties which have secured a majority will be able to form power.