The non-cabinet Ministry of State Plantation Enterprise Reforms stated that it would soon implement the programme of providing the people in plantation-based areas with postal addresses.
A postal address, to which a person receives government documents such as tax forms and voting ballots, is one of the critical requirements for obtaining a National Identity Card (NIC), registering to vote, and for many other significant processes.
Speaking to the media, subject Minister Ranjith Siyambalapitiya said that the Ministry would work to provide the people living in plantation-based areas with postal addresses under the President and National Policies Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe's programme to ensure that they are granted equal rights as others.
Pointing out that the provision of postal addresses to them is an establishment of their fundamental rights, Siyambalapitiya said that the Plantation Industries Ministry Secretary had instructed the relevant plantation companies, the Janatha Estate Development Board (JEDB), and the State Plantations Corporation (SPC) to expedite the relevant processes.
In March, an estate employee from Mawathagama, Kurunegala had filed a fundamental rights (FR) petition in the Supreme Court (SC) in the public interest, over the denial and lack of registered postal addresses allocated to residences in their community.
The petitioner, Jeewarathnam Sureshkumar, had sought a registered postal address for their individual residences instead of a common address given to an entire estate. Due to the residents not having a personalised address to each house, he had claimed that they faced a number of issues when seeking to accomplish essential tasks such as applying for jobs, registering births, applying for a death certificate, getting married, registering for examinations, and opening a bank account.
Further, he had claimed that the lack of postal addresses had caused great complications in enrolling children in school, in connection with matters pertaining to police investigations, getting an NIC, and receiving government allowances such as Samurdhi, and elsewhere, the Employees’ Provident Fund and the Employees’ Trust Fund.