Former Prime Minister and the United National Party (UNP) leader Ranil Wickremesinghe said that a UNP government will grant a one year grace period to pay back the water and electricity bills that have been accumulated in the past few months and to repay the loans taken under the Enterprise Sri Lanka program.
Mr. Wickremesinghe pointed out that the people of the country have not received any relief under the present government and that his aim is to save the affected people and rebuild the country and he has a systematic program to achieve the goal.
This program will be presented to the public within the next three weeks, the UNP leader said expressing his views at a public rally held in Kaduwela yesterday.
Speaking further, Mr. Wickremesinghe said although the present government came to power and has ruled the country for more than eight months, none of the issues in the country were resolved. This has caused many problems in the country.
“Although the spread of coronavirus in Sri Lanka began in February, what has the government done to counter it? The government allowed to people to lose their jobs. In this backdrop, other countries have declared that the employees should not be laid off and provided them with the necessary financial support to secure the jobs.”
“But what happened in our country? Those who waited silently and took no action in this connection now come to the election stage and accuse others of planning to divide the country.”
“No one is going to divide the country. Instead of talking about dividing the country, we should act to protect jobs and save people from hunger. We must work to strengthen the economy.”
“Our aim is to build the economy of the home and the economy of the country. There is a huge foreign exchange and income shortfall under this government. The government cannot solve this problem.”
However, a mechanism should be put in place to get that foreign exchange back to our country,” Mr. Wickremesinghe added that he hopes to reveal the mechanism at length to the country soon.
Feroz Hajjiyar has organized the public rally in Central Colombo, and Amal Pussellage organized the Avissawella rally. The Kaduwela rally were organized by Binara Jayawardena.