News

Trojan Horse for farmers?

The Alliance for the Protection of National Resources and Human Rights charged yesterday that the controversial Land Entitlement Bill to be introduced soon would plunge some 1.2 million farmers deeper into poverty and turn those once-dignified people into cheap labour slaves.

Spokesman Sarath Fernando said that on face value the new move was billed as a plan to give land to the landless farmers, but it was a blatant lie because most of the farmers did possess their lands now though they were not legally entitled to sell the lands in terms of the 1935 Land Development Ordinance.

Mr. Fernando said the new bill would make the farmers’ lands legally marketable and it was clear that most of the farmers who were neckdeep in debt would be tempted or compelled to sell their lands to big companies.

He said the alliance believed that the bill would ultimately force several hundred thousand small farmers to migrate to urban areas where they would have no option but to work as cheap labour slaves for BOI or other companies.

According to research done by the alliance, the urban-rural ratio now is 24 percent urban and 76 percent rural.

The land bill and other World Bank-IMF strategies are intended to bring about a 25 percent urban migration within the next seven years so that more cheap labour would be available for the big urban companies.

Mr. Fernando said the alliance was consulting legal opinion with the aim of challenging the bill on the basis that the people had not been properly informed about these measures which could bring about drastic social consequences

He said the 1935 land laws had been formulated with a far-sighted social objective of maintaining Sri Lanka’s agricultural base and giving the farming community the dignity of their own lands though they were not legally allowed to market the lands.

Now with the farming lands being thrown into the swirl of the free market, Sri Lanka’s farming community is facing its gravest threat, he said.

Mr. Fernando said the whole new scheme to dismantle the small farmer community was essentially a plan of the World Bank and had been accepted by both major parties.

He said the alliance regarded this move as a potential social disaster for hundreds of thousands of farmers who had toiled to provide the country’s staple diet for centuries.

He said that besides legal action the alliance would carry out intensive campaigns to create more awareness of the impending danger and rally public support to save Sri Lanka's hard working farmers.