Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2017-11-21

Provision of footwear for students in difficult, most difficult and remote schools

- The Ministry of Education is implementing the programme for the provision of a pair of footwear for the students in the difficult, most difficult and remote schools. Accordingly, footwear have been provided to 621,941 students in the year 2016 and a sum of Rs.592.2 million has been spent by the Government for the purpose. In implementing this programme, suppliers were selected through a procurement process and they adopted a method of getting the sizes of the feet of the students to manufacture footwear to fit those sizes and distributed those footwear to the schools. Considering the lengthy period of about 6 months taken and the necessity of providing footwear to all school students at the same time, focus has been made to implement this programme by providing a gift voucher to the students in lieu of the above procedure in providing the footwear required for this year.

As such, the proposal made by Hon. Akila Viraj Kariyawasam, the Minister of Education, to implement the programme in this year by providing the students with gift vouchers to the value of Rs.1,200/- to Rs.1,500/- according to their grades, incurring an expenditure of around Rs.808.27 million, was approved by the Cabinet.