The government will provide subsidised housing to needy migrant workers under its Rataviru Piyasa housing programme. Plans are afoot to build 1,000 such houses this year.

The programme is implemented in accordance with a proposal of President Mahinda Rajapaksa to help needy migrant workers and their families.

The government has allocated Rs. 100 million to initiate the programme.

Consequent to the World Health Organisation (WHO) establishing the high content of arsenic as the cause of kidney disease in the dry zone, the Agriculture Ministry will recommend a quality control on pesticides imported to the country, a minister said yesterday.

The WHO, after years of experiments, published its findings on the disease. The experts’ panel had narrowed down the etiology of chronic renal failure to arsenic, cadmium and water hardness.

Health Minister Maithripala Sirisena presented this report to

While appreciating US efforts at the recently concluded United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) sessions in Geneva, the Global Tamil Forum (GTF) said that the second US resolution targeting Sri Lanka didn’t meet the expectations of Tamil speaking people.

The GTF asserted that it was a grave lapse on the part of those who had sponsored the resolution to still believe there could be an independent and impartial domestic investigation into accountability issues in Sri Lanka.

Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe, Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative in Geneva Ravinatha Aryasinha and members of the Sri Lanka delegation Dilini Gunasekera and Priyanga Wickremasinghe (back row) at the UN Human Rights Council.

The Sunday Observer conducted an email interview with Leader of the Sri Lanka Team to Geneva, President’s Special Envoy on Human Rights, Minister Mahinda Samarasinghe soon after the 22nd regular session of the UN Human Rights Council ended on Friday. The Minister answered our questions, expla

The recent attacks on Christian denominations bears out the contention I made earlier and which significantly more erudite observers of the national scene have identified as a government gone completely mad in its efforts to distract the public from the realities that are descending upon this nation and for which the current corrupt and violent government should take complete responsibility.

It is more than a year since the invasion of a mosque in Dambulla by a thousands-strong Buddhist-priest-led mob and nothing has been done

Over the past months Sri Lankans have been educated on two Arabic words: halal and haram (that which is permissible and not permissible). Unfortunately the circumstances of learning have been an unprecedented antagonism towards the Muslim community much deeper than the halal issue. This trend must be addressed without delay by the government and all religions before it spirals into a much wider conflict, which the country can ill afford.

The government’s responsibility is to do what all governments are mandated to do: en

An asylum-seeker boat carrying at least 95 people today capsized off near Christmas island leaving two people dead and two critically injured.

 

Australian Customs vessel Ocean Protector went to the aid of the asylum-seeker boat and had taken survivors to Christmas Island, Minister for Home Affairs Jason Clare was quoted as saying by the 'The Australian' newspaper.

The Sri Lankan government has denied a report that it is “exploring the possibility” of shifting the Deputy High Commissioner’s office from Chennai to Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, following the recent incidents of violence against  Lankans and their establishments in Tamil Nadu.

“There is no move to shift the mission, as of now. But it may be considered if the situation in Tamil Nadu worsens,” Foreign Secretary Karunatilaka Amunugama told Express here on Sunday, reacting to a front page repor

On Friday, a day after a US-sponsored resolution on Sri Lanka was passed in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), in Geneva, the US Ambassador in Colombo held a media roundtable.  She was at pains to underscore that ‘the resolution was not against Sri Lanka,’ and that it was on Sri Lanka. Her remarks were in response to a question by a scribe whether the US would impose sanctions, should the government in Colombo fail to comply with the resolution.

The Ambassador  instead of commenting  on sanctions

For a country to progress socially, economically and be at peace within her borders, democracy, justice and good governance needs to flourish. On the threshold of independence in 1948 Sri Lanka held much promise compared to her neighbor in the Indian Ocean.

Eran Wickramaratne during UNP Membership drive in Colombo East-Mar 2013-pic: facebook.com/Eran.Wickramaratne