Today morning, I was listening to the radio program at SLBC, "Rata Yana Atha". One UNP MP Lakshman Seneviratne, of Mahiyanganaya spoke to the program and said, there the farmers paddy harvesting season and they do not get the proper price as government says and the farmers get only 24 Rupees per KG while government rate is 30 Rupees per Kg. Also, MP Seneviratne said, govt can buy only 2-3% of paddy from the overall harvest and this will give some motivation to farmers to negotiate with higher rates with the private businessmen. But, today even 1.5% is not buying by the paddy marketing board and this is the main reason for private business people to reduce the paddy prices. He promised, he is ready to undergo any kind of punishment if any body prove this otherwise.

Hudsan Samarasinghe, the chairperson of SLBC who was the presentor of the program asked what is the suggestion to solve the problem.
What Lakshman Seneviratne proposed is as follows;
1. Provide allocated money to particular district secretariat at the time of harvest.
2. Stop import of rice when the harvesting season started.
3. Put high tarriff barrier to rice if the traders import rice during the season.
4. Provide storage facilities to the store paddy.

All of sudden Maithripala Sirisena,the minister of agriculture interviewed and buldozed the whole idea of MP Lakshman Seneviratne, saying all these are not true and the paddy marketing board is buying the rice with the proposed rate, at the same time when the farmers bring the paddy to the marketing centers, they will get even the transport costs.
Minister rejected the idea of transactions to the district secretariat saying this is factually incorrect information as there is no financial transactions to the DS, as the paddy marketing board only buying the paddy from the farmers.

My assessment on both the interventions are as follows;
> When the politicians are in the opposition, they can see all the difficulties of the people and highly articulate on them.
> When the politicians are in the power, they have solved all the problems and have reliable mechanisms to solve the problems of the people.
> People need to understand this situation and should work accordingly as politicians are playing with people's issues to capture the power as well as maintain the power.

We, Sri Lankan social movements, NGOs, People's organizations, individuals need to initiate a dialogue on this.

Herman