The opposition is engaged in a narrow political agenda by focusing on educational qualifications because there is no theft in the current government, said Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya.
Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya made these remarks while participating in the Parliamentary debate on the supplementary estimate to provide an allowance for school children to purchase stationery.
Speaking further, Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya stated:
"According to data from the Department of Census and Statistics, the economic crisis has adversely affected the education of 55% of school children. This has had a greater impact on children living in rural and estate areas. Among the affected children, 53.2% have completely stopped purchasing school stationery, and 62.1% are reusing previously used school supplies.
To minimize the adverse impact on the education of vulnerable school children, the government has decided to provide an allowance to support their studies commencing in 2025. Accordingly, it is planned to provide an allowance of six thousand (6000) rupees per child for children between the ages of five and sixteen from well-off families. In addition, we aim to extend this allowance to children from economically disadvantaged families who are not part of well-off households.
Furthermore, the government is actively working to ensure children remain in school. There have been persistent issues in the past regarding the provision of midday meals. Despite funds being allocated, questions remain as to whether all children have received these meals properly.
We also plan to provide school uniforms to all children by 2025. For this purpose, the Chinese government has generously provided full funding for school uniforms. We express our gratitude to the Chinese government for this support.
However, it is unfortunate that while we, as a government, are working towards solving the country’s problems, certain groups within the opposition are attempting to sabotage our programs using their affiliated media outlets.
The opposition has even tried to create an issue by linking me to an incident related to the distribution of school uniforms—an issue that does not even exist in the Chinese government. Fortunately, both the Chinese ambassador and the Chinese government understood the political motives behind this situation. Although the opposition made significant efforts to spread the view that our government cannot maintain international relations, all such attempts have been unsuccessful.
At present, the opposition has developed an unusual interest in scrutinizing the educational qualifications of the government’s MPs and ministers. Previously, they focused on allegations of theft. Now, since there are no thefts to investigate, they are turning to educational qualifications. If this scrutiny is being done with the genuine intention of exposing falsehoods to the public, we support it. However, it is clear that this is driven by a very narrow political agenda.
From the moment this government was formed, the opposition has been working to discredit us and project a negative image of the government to society. Their current actions clearly indicate that the opposition still does not understand the purpose for which the people appointed this Parliament.
