The Government is planning to establish a youth commission to oversee the implementation of the youth policy currently being drafted by the Youth Affairs Ministry, with youth unemployment and employment opportunities among its key areas of focus.
Speaking to The Daily Morning, Deputy Youth Affairs Minister Dinindu Saman Hennayake said the policy is at its final stage, although discussions at the Provincial level are still ongoing.
“Still, the policies regarding the North and the East are yet to be finalised, and we have scheduled the meetings for that during the course of next month (November). Next year (2027), in the first quarter (January-March), we expect to finalise the policy totally. Through this, we are going to address unemployment among youth,” he said.
According to Hennayake, the policy will set out the agreement between the Government and youth, while also focusing on employment opportunities.
“There is a direct goal to address unemployment. The creation of new opportunities, encouraging entrepreneurship, and the mediation of the Government are there. There was no youth policy for the country earlier. We have an idea to establish a youth commission to execute the policy. Through this, we will be able to observe youth-related concerns of each Ministry under one commission,” he said.
However, he added that the structural model of the proposed commission is yet to be discussed.
The proposal comes as Sri Lanka’s unemployment rate rose to 4% in the second quarter (April-June) of this year (2026), with young people continuing to face difficulties in finding employment, according to the Census and Statistics Department. The rate increased from 3.8% in the second quarter of last year (2025) and 3.7% in the first quarter of this year.
Acknowledging that the unemployment rate is temporarily high, Hennayake said the Ministry aims to reduce it by the end of this year through the programmes currently being implemented.
He said the Government has no plans to introduce a system to recruit large numbers of employees at once. Instead, recruitment to existing vacancies in the Government sector would be carried out according to a priority list.
“Other than that, we are trying to expand the job market in the private sector by encouraging entrepreneurship,” he said.
He said a mechanism is also being developed to bring together employment and other opportunities available to youth through different Ministries.
“President Anura Kumara Dissanayake has appointed a subcommittee collaborating with six Ministries, and within that, opportunities for youth will be identified. With that, the youth-related programmes that were executed individually will be navigated to one place,” he said.
The Government is also planning to establish a youth app through which young people could directly consult Ministries regarding issues affecting them.