Potato farmers threaten massive Colombo protest over government incompetence

A corrupt process is currently operating where politicians line the pockets of their cronies and gather commissions instead of strengthening local potato growers.

The Deshaye Govi Handa organisation announced this during a media briefing in Nuwara Eliya, revealing that they are fully prepared to gather farmers from across the island straight into Colombo for a massive demonstration.

The chairman of the organisation, Tharindu Rathnayake, pulled absolutely no punches regarding the state of agricultural governance:

"Although the severe plight faced by local potato farmers for many years under previous governments and for two years under the current government, and the situation caused by importing potatoes from Pakistan and several other foreign countries is being stated, no action is taken so far as a responsible government.

The country's ministry of agriculture is handed over to an absolute lunatic and a person suffering from dementia. Apart from him hanging out and having fun with his friends every day, he did nothing for the farmer or for agricultural development.

When a person with experience in the agricultural sector is the president of the country, if the person who is the agriculture minister is trying to destroy his own sector, either that person should be removed from the government, or if he cannot understand it and work, he should step down.

Without doing either of these, if steps are taken to destroy the local farmers' economy and strike the farmers' stomach, we are ready to line up against that.

If what the government wants is to get this resolved by having us protest, we are working on that these days, too.

In the future, regional political leaders should also be ready to get beaten with hoe handles because the farmers are thoroughly fed up.

Those people speaking from Colombo, Lal Kantha and Namal Karunarathna, should come down to the village and see, then they will not be able to imagine what will happen. As an initial phase of resolving the local farmers' issues, protests are being organised from district to district. One of those protests takes place in Thambuththegama, the president's area.

In the future, such protests will be implemented covering all districts, and a massive protest will be organised by the Deshaye Govi Handa organisation, with farmers representing all districts surrounding the Ministry of Agriculture in Colombo."