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| Thursday, 14 October 2004 |
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by Uditha Kumarasinghe The Agriculture and Lands Ministry is now formulating a National Land Policy in keeping with the country's socio-economic strategies and preventing foreigners from owning local lands. This national land policy will be formulated to manage the country's land resource properly aiming to create sustainable development in the country, a Ministry spokesman told the Daily News. He said all key factors of any country such as agriculture, environment and other socio-economic sectors are mainly dependent on lands in that country. A national land policy has not yet been formulated in Sri Lanka to preserve and develop local lands. On the directions of Agriculture and Lands Minister Anura Kumara Dissanayake, a committee which includes officials who have skilled knowledge on the subject of lands are now in the process of preparing the basic draft in relation to this national lands policy, he said. This committee comprised Lands Commissioner S.J. Pathirana, Ministry Additional Secretary (Lands) D.M. Jayathilaka and several university professors and state sector scholars who are specialised in this subject. The basic draft of the national lands policy intends to cover these key objectives such as ensuring the land rights for Sri Lankans, utilisation of lands for agriculture, industries and irrigation projects, formalising land administrative activities, formulating policies on distribution, vest and use Government lands, following accurate methods to survey lands, establishing a new institutional framework like National Lands Commission, preventing malpractices on lands and introducing new training courses on the subject of lands. At present the Ministry is receiving a large number of public views on this proposed national lands policy following a newspaper advertisement published by the Ministry. This Ministry will accept these suggestions and views of the public up to October 25, he said. "The total amount of the country's land is 6.5 million hectares. This is a limited space of land resource compared with the 19 million population. Of the total amount of lands, only 84 per cent of lands can be utilised. Therefore this national land policy hopes to safeguard country's land resource and utilise them properly for country's development," he said. |
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