Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2018-08-21

Providing facilities to enhance the productivity of the Tea Small Holdings

- Approval of the Cabinet has been granted previously to provide relief measures, to distribute equipment among the tea smallholders and to enhance the connected rural infrastructure facilities to increase the productivity of the Tea Smallholdings. Further, it has been found that, it would be more appropriate to enhance the tea productivity by ensuring the uninterrupted tea production by the Tea Smallholders, adopting agricultural practices such as proper land preparation, pruning, weeding, standard maintenance of tea bushes, proper application of fertilizer, avoiding soil erosion and ample supply of water during dry seasons. Accordingly, the proposal made by Hon. Navin Dissanayake, the Minister of Plantation Industries, to implement a programme for distributing the equipment required to adopt the proper agricultural mechanisms relating to the tea cultivation among the tea smallholders at an investment of Rs.250 million and to distribute 10,000 water tanks, 3,500 water pumps and 4,500 sprayers among them under the said programme, was approved by the Cabinet.