A number of civil society organisations, including the Electricity Consumers' Association (ECA), have organised a protest in front of the Ministry of Power and Energy today (29), urging the Government to lower electricity tariffs and fuel prices.

Speaking to The Daily Morning yesterday (28), ECA General Secretary Sanjeewa Dhammika claimed that Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekera has implicitly stated on several occasions that the Government would have to raise electricity tariffs and fuel prices again. However, noting that the electricity tariffs and fuel prices have been increased by large amounts on many occasions in the last two years, he said that the people would have no way to live if such an increase is done again. 

“The Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB) and the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation (CPC) have become profit making institutions in the recent past. In spite of this, the Government is trying to place the burden of all unnecessary expenses of those institutions on the shoulders of the people and to raise the electricity rates and fuel prices again. If the people remain silent every time, the Government will not stop this anti-people programme,” he claimed.

Speaking further, Dhammika said that a protest has been organised near the Ministry premises down Flower Road, Colombo 7 today to protest the difficulties that the people are facing due to what he claimed to be the Government's “anti-people” policies and to urge the Government to reduce the existing electricity tariffs and fuel prices. He said that the ECA and several other parties including civil society organisations and religious leaders would participate in it.

Since the end of 2021, an unprecedented economic crisis has emerged in Sri Lanka due to the shortage of foreign exchange reserves. In such a situation, there was a broad discussion about bringing loss-making public institutions such as the CEB and the CPC to a profitable state. In an attempt to make those institutions profitable, electricity tariffs and fuel prices, which had not been increased for a long time, or had only been raised at low rates in previous cases, were increased at significant rates, and such increases have been made on several occasions.