🇱🇰 Social Justice Vital in Plantation Sector Reform

The National Peace Council (NPC) has urged the Government to integrate social justice and rights-based empowerment into the second phase of its plantation reform programme, ensuring economic transformation benefits workers alongside investors. • Sector Objectives: The reform aims to attract private and corporate investment, open underutilised land, modernise the sector, and generate new employment opportunities. • Worker Welfare & Concerns: Pointing to a recent Amnesty International report on Malaiyaha Tamil workers in private tea estates, the NPC highlighted ongoing issues of wage withholding, debt dependency, and restricted movement. • Key Recommendations for Injustice Correction: • Recognize workers as rights-bearing stakeholders rather than just a labor force. • Incorporate housing ownership, secure land tenure, quality education, and vocational training into the reform from the outset. • Establish an independent national land commission with diverse ethnic and religious representation to ensure transparent land allocation and credible dispute resolution. • National Impact: Correcting historic structural injustices faced by the Malaiyaha Tamil community—who have heavily supported the plantation economy since 1948—is framed as a critical investment in national unity and social cohesion rather than a commercial concession.