{"id":140386,"date":"2024-02-10T16:55:04","date_gmt":"2024-02-10T23:55:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=140386"},"modified":"2024-02-10T16:55:04","modified_gmt":"2024-02-10T23:55:04","slug":"comments-on-the-presidents-policy-statement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2024\/02\/10\/comments-on-the-presidents-policy-statement\/","title":{"rendered":"Comments on the President&#8217;s Policy Statement"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Garvin Karunaratne former SLAS, GA Matara.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>What the country needs immediately is a programme of employment creation and poverty alleviation where the unemployed will be making things that are being imported today. Last week I saw a packet of pastry sheets made in Malaysia for sale at Cargills.&nbsp; An industry to make pastry sheets can be set up in one day.&nbsp; I see Jam and Fruit Drinks made in Austraila- we did once make these ourselves and can make them within weeks. I see Aloe vira drinks made in India. That can be made in days. We must immediately have a crash programme to make things ourselves and this will achieve both poverty as well as reduce imports. We even imported kirilala. We must also have an effective import control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Half our people are hungry and live on two meals a day. It is sheer poverty that we can easily avoid.&nbsp; Very soon the poor will storm the bastille. Our President and Prime Minister , the highest elected person should open their eyes before it is late. This is a task that has to be done and can be done.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Garvin Karunaratne former SLAS, GA Matara.\u00a0 What the country needs immediately is a programme of employment creation and poverty alleviation where the unemployed will be making things that are being imported today. Last week I saw a packet of pastry sheets made in Malaysia for sale at Cargills.&nbsp; An industry to make pastry sheets can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-by-garvin-karunaratne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140386\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}