The hardships faced by Sri Lanka’shill-country Tamil community are no longer just a matter of ethnic identities, poverty, marginalisation, or inferior living conditions. Many of their issues have been ignored and underestimated for too long that their plight is now a matter of the neglect of and failure to resolve a national-level issue by the political and other authorities.

Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA) Leader and Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) Opposition MP Mano Ganesan recently called out this neglect and failure, claiming that unless there is written assurance from President Ranil Wickremesinghe on the demand that the President should nominate a special committee to look into the issues of the estate sector community, the TPA would not be interested in attending the upcoming all-party conference. This is in a context where the TPA had continuously reminded President Wickremesinghe of the need to separately address the socio-political issues of this community.

With the estate sector community being one of the most crucial groups that directly and significantly contribute to the national economy, and which forms a considerable voter base, it is shockingly unacceptable that this neglect has been displayed by successive governments. Any government concerned about the stability of the economy and of the country would have considered this community’s plight a priority, and would have, at the very least, listened to the countless demands by various parties regarding solutions to the same. The political authority’s lethargy in this regard is clearly visible in the case of this community’s daily wage issue, which remained unaddressed for years and continues to affect them owing to high inflation.

The prevailing situation is such that political leaders like Ganesan that have been elected to Parliament on the hill-country Tamil community’s votes have had to force and threaten governments and Heads of State to take these issues seriously. Even though setting various conditions and entering into political agreements to draw the political authority’s attention to such neglected issues has become a common sight in Sri Lanka’s political arena, this should by no means be accepted as the status quo. On the one hand, if political leaders or social activists have to force a government to do what is required of it, that shows incompetence and insensitivity on the part of that government. On the other hand, it raises serious concerns about the political decisions that the country’s people make as far as electing their representatives is concerned.

Either way, both the estate sector community and the country’s economy are at stake. As claimed by several recent reports, owing to the aforementioned issues, while many members of this community who are involved in traditional plantation sector-related work are considering shifting to new professions, the number of people who are entering it is considerably less. Needless to say, if left unaddressed, this would have a considerable impact on the country’s plantation sector and on the segment of the economy that depends on this sector. The more time that the Government takes to genuinely look into the issues of this community, the more difficult it will become to solve its issues in the future.