Asia Today > Homepage > News > 

Plan helps tea planters

2009-08-27 16:36 BJT

Watch Video

Play Video

Tamils originally from India, were brought to Sri Lanka by the British, to provide cheap labor on estates. Today, the plantation workers in South Central Sri Lanka remain the poorest people in the country. The UNDP has helped the government form an action plan to improve their situation.

South Central Sri Lanka is home to beautiful tea plantations, and impoverished plantation workers.

For generations, they have faced social, economic and political isolation.

Meyan Vamadevan, Ministry of Nation-building and Infrastructure, said, "This community in the past has been neglected for a long period. They have been subject to social isolation, economically and politically also. The benefit of the development has not reached them fully."

In 2006, the UNDP supported the government in forming an action plan that focuses on the country's most vulnerable, including those in the plantation sector.

The government, together with the UNDP are now moving ahead, trying to translate the plan into concrete results.