The government has decided to release 30,000 acres of state-owned land in the Wanni to a private company for sugarcane cultivation.
The cabinet on June 26 approved president Ranil Wickremesinghe’s proposal to grant the land in Vavuniya, Kilinochchi and Mullaitivu districts for the Board of Investment project.
The president has also suggested establishing a sugar factory on a 492-acre plot at Nainamadu in Vavuniya.
In the meantime, TNPF leader Gajendra Kumar Ponnambalam has told parliament that Tamils evicted from Vavuniya North and Kokkutuduvai in Mullaitivu in 1983 are yet to be resettled.
When they were allowed access back due to the then Rajapaksa regime having come under international pressure for the resettlement of the displaced, they found their land distributed among Sinhalese outsiders, he said.
They had been cultivating the land for several generations, and they have the licenses to establish their ownership, he added.
