A worker filed a petition with the Supreme Court. Workers receive mail at their workplace. The fact of not being able to establish the domicile impairs their participation in government programs and in the democratic process.
Colombo () – A worker filed a petition with the Supreme Court, asking local authorities to grant registered and permanent addresses to the Tamil community employed in tea, coconut and rubber plantations across the country.
These sectors, which are key to the national economy, mainly employ South Indian Tamils, descendants of slaves brought to the island nation some 200 years ago, during British colonization. Many of them did not obtain citizenship until February this year, but do not have a permanent home, address or postal address, Jeevaratnam Sureshkumar explains in his petition.
The worker who applied to the Court works on a farm in Muwankanda, in Mawathagama, Kurunegala district, and his petition gives voice to Tamil families who, having received citizenship, do not have a registered address. This prevents them from accessing government programs and they cannot participate in the country’s democratic process, the petition states.
About 300 families live on the Muwankanda farm. All personal correspondence addressed to them – letters and documents of various kinds – arrive at “Muwankanda Estate, Mawathagama”, or are delivered to the district post office. This is delivered in its entirety to the person in charge of the farm, a person who does not enjoy the confidence of the local workers.
As Jeevaratnam Sureshkumar points out, the Janatha Estate Development Board manages 277 estates that are home to some 400,000 people, but none of them have a permanent address.
The petition challenges the Minister of the Interior, Dinesh Gunawardena, the head of the Plantations, Ramesh Pathirana, and the Minister of Water Supply and Infrastructure Development, Jeevan Thondaman.
