15 May 2025 | BY Sumudu Chamara – The Morning news 
Although a small number of children from the Malaiyaha community based in the Southern Province have reached top educational levels, the community’s children face a number of issues due to economic hardships, the shortage of teachers in schools, and the lack of proper facilities.
Noting this, the Voice of the Plantation People (VOPP) organisation urged the authorities to take steps to address increased school dropouts among the community’s children.
The VOPP discussed this matter in a research report launched in Colombo recently on the social, economic, cultural and political situation of the Southern Malaiyaha community. The report added that although the Malaiyaha people living in the Southern Province face various challenges related to their livelihoods, economy, and political conditions, these challenges are minimally exposed to the outside world, and that activities carried out to find solutions to these problems and surveys to expose them to the outside world are also limited.
The report explained that when it comes to economic crises, although various sections of the plantation community hit by economic crises had opportunities to overcome them, the Malaiyaha people had no chance of escaping them. Noting that despite the seriousness of these problems, little attention is paid to them and little effort is made to find solutions, the report recommended that the relevant parties should pay attention to the issues and develop a framework for finding solutions to the challenges.
The VOPP’s report said that land-related problems faced by this community are closely related to all other problems faced by the community. “There is a need for the Government and the relevant parties to pay special attention to the land issue. At the same time, the Government had provided seven perches of land each to the Malaiyaha people of the Galle, Matara and Kalutara Districts on various occasions from 1993 to 2021. But, no acceptable legal document (proof) has been provided for those lands so far. Since there is no legal document, it is not possible for them to freely enjoy the ownership of their land. Therefore, immediate steps should be taken to provide deeds to these people’s lands and confirm their legal ownership of the land. Since there is a problem with accurate information regarding the Malaiyaha people who have acquired lands so far, a programme should be developed to collect and update information regarding this.”
The report added that women working in tea and rubber plantations are severely affected by the lack of sanitary facilities such as toilets and restrooms, and that attention should be paid to this issue and steps should be taken to instruct the plantation companies to provide the relevant facilities.
