Beyond a privileged few, women face severe hardship - Opposition Leader

Women are the driving force behind Sri Lanka's development, Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa said yesterday (20), while addressing the Samagi Vanitha Balawegaya convention held in Buttala,

Noting that women represented 52% of the population and constituted the nation's driving force, he said that beyond a privileged few, the vast majority continued to face severe hardship, including harassment at the workplace, on public roads and within the home, amounting to a violation of their fundamental rights.

He said that the erosion of women's rights was inseparable from the erosion of children's rights, highlighting that mothers were typically responsible for a child's safety, protection and care from early childhood, and that when women's rights were violated, children too suffered harassment, oppression and the loss of their basic entitlements.

The Opposition Leader also accused the government of governing on the basis of flawed data and betraying its election pledges to farmers.

He pointed out that the government had promised a guaranteed price of Rs. 150 per kilogram during its election campaign, a figure that had since fallen to Rs. 120, leaving farmers Rs. 17 short of what had been assured and trapping the farming community in what he termed a deadly cycle of debt.

The Opposition Leader said the government's recently released Department of Census and Statistics figures on minimum monthly living costs exposed the gap between official claims and ground reality, citing Rs. 16,367 as the amount deemed sufficient for a person to survive for 30 days in the Monaragala District, and questioning whether residents there genuinely found this adequate.

He noted that the same data placed the figure at Rs. 17,244 in the Badulla District and Rs. 17,315 in the Hambantota District, stating that these calculations illustrated the government's inability to develop the industrial, agricultural and service sectors