“Wherever there is unused dry or wet land, something economically beneficial should be cultivated.” says Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation K.D. Lalkantha.
Under the current government’s policy framework ‘A Thriving Nation – A Beautiful Life’, the third phase of granting ‘Himikama’ deeds by the Land Reform Commission was held today (29th ) in the Kandy District under the patronage of Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation K.D. Lalkantha.
The Minister expressed his views while addressing the ‘Himikama’ deed holders participating in this event.
Today I need to make a request from you who are receiving Deeds of Transfer. I request all the people in the country to clean the road section in front of the land. If your fence border adjoins the road, keep it completely clean and tidy from your fence to the road. Citizens must also intervene in building the country.
If there is space on your land, produce whatever product the country needs. We have now brought a program called ‘Eka Mitata – Govi Bimata’ .What that means is not a story about cultivating old paddy fields. You cannot keep land that you own without cultivating it. Wherever there is unused dry or wet land, something economically beneficial should be cultivated. I’m making a suggestion. Go to the Nuwara Eliya side where there are small plots of land. Leeks are being grown right from the courtyard on small plots of land. In extreme cold weather and under drizzling rain, they are cultivated on small pieces of land. But there are acres of land in other areas. Those lands are lying idle. There is legal power to take over uncultivated land for the government. We ask the general public to cultivate these lands, thinking about the country and thinking about their own economy.
If you cannot cultivate, make an agreement with someone who can cultivate and hand it over through a system. We still import a large quantity of food from abroad. It’s embarrassing to call ourselves an agricultural country. We still have to import rice from abroad. There is now a plan to completely stop importing rice from abroad by the year 2028. Some hotels need rice like Basmati, which has to be imported from abroad. The rice production of the past two seasons can feed the country without a shortage. We are overcoming challenges like this one by one.
We have several types of land. They are lands belonging to the Land Reform Commission, lands under the custody of Divisional Secretaries, and Mahaweli lands. We want to select one Divisional Secretary’s Division from each district and solve the land problems there.
A national program is starting tomorrow. There is a drug-related problem. Our villages everywhere have fallen victim to this. There is no institution that hasn’t been affected. Some officers help them. We must create a drug-free Sri Lanka. Everyone should cooperate to solve this problem without party differences. Information should be given to the relevant institutions. The state institution that was said to be the worst is now being spoken of as good. That is the Sri Lanka Police. Now an opinion is forming among the people that the police are good.
We came to power and did not take revenge on other political parties. We did not transfer state institution officers here and there. We ask officers to respect that too. There are still officers who maintain the old political culture. The people also need to understand, the government is one thing. The ruling party is one thing. The ruling party is correct. But there are still bottlenecks in the public service. We ask the people not to give even five rupees to anyone to get your work done. If there is a problem anywhere, make a complaint.
Many officials, including officials from the Land Reforms Commission, participated in this event.
