A special discussion was held between the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation, K.D. Lalkantha and UN Sri Lanka Coordinator Marc-André Franche.

A special discussion was held recently at the Ministry of Agriculture between the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Land and Irrigation, K.D. Lalkantha and UN Coordinator Marc-André Franche along with several representatives, regarding land distribution in the North and future projects.

The Minister clarified to the delegation that his government has special attention regarding the need to act with utmost transparency on sensitive matters such as land distribution and to properly allocate lands to the rightful individuals, and that this government has been operating thus far thinking as people's representatives rather than as rulers, and that it will continue in the future. 

In respect of the Northern land issue, land allocation was temporarily halted due to some groups' eagerness to quickly resolve matters and other groups' inability to engage in this process. The Minister stated that since the existing law was in force, legal advice had to be sought, and a Cabinet paper was submitted proposing to halt this land distribution. According to the Cabinet decision, the department head would have the capability to halt this process. The Minister further clarified that the main reason for the government making this decision was to prevent injustice to the people.

The representative mentioned that this situation has arisen due to factors such as the lack of people's data and the destruction of documents, and that they could intervene to help resolve these issues. He further stated that three million dollars could be allocated for this project.

Since a very good proposal was submitted, the Minister stated that because his government does not operate like previous rulers regarding such special projects, this could be referred to a discussion at the Presidential Secretariat to develop a favorable approach for this purpose and that it could be implemented with great transparency, which also earned the representative's praise.

Several senior officials also participated in this discussion.