We acknowledge the immense contribution to Sri Lanka made by the Malaiyaha Tamil community over two centuries. Given the structural exclusion they suffered, we recognize the need for affirmative action to improve their wellbeing. We will work towards that by:

• Raising the educational attainment of Malaiyaha students at all levels through a targeted programme including establishment of national schools with Science, Mathematics and Technology streams and improving infrastructure facilities.
• Establishing an additional College of Education to train teachers in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics (STEAM) in Tamil medium and a Nurses Training Institute.
• Initiating a campus in Hatton affiliated with an existing University as a first step towards a full-fledged university with the proposed name of Highland University of Sri Lanka (HUSL).
• Providing targeted and accessible Vocational Training programmes and support for entrepreneurship of Malaiyaha youth.
• Integrating all health facilities in the estate sector into the national health systems.
• Implementing a targeted support programme to address stunting among children, anaemia among women of reproductive age, and infant and maternal mortality.
• Ensuring fair and just implementation of the social protection programme to the plantation community.
• Introducing and implementing a government policy to transform plantation workers into land-owning smallholder farmers.
• Assuring a living wage to plantation workers during this transition period.
• Distributing abandoned land in estates to the estate residents for livelihood purposes of cultivation, animal husbandry and entrepreneurial activities. Providing titles to the lands already being cultivated by estate residents as per the government policy.
• Implementing an affirmative action programme, in line with President Ranasinghe Premadasa’s policy, in public sector employment in areas where representation of the Malaiyaha community is woefully inadequate. Establishing new villages in plantation areas and providing adequate resources to NEVIDA to fulfil its mandate. Demarcating new GN and DS divisions and assuring equitable access to decentralised state services that enable transformation from workers – tied to plantation employers – to full-fledged citizens.
• Taking legislative and administrative measures to ensure that resident families in the estates are given land with title deeds for housing. Such lands shall be located with easy access to approach roads. The extent of land distributed shall be in parity with what was distributed to others in the same Divisional Secretariat area.
• Regularising with title deeds the houses that have already been built under PHDT, NHDA and other government programmes.
• Integrating the Tamil people migrating to the urban centres into the social safety net programmes including low-income housing programmes and improving resources in schools in the area to accommodate children of these families.
• While ensuring power-sharing at the center and periphery we will review the numbers of local government bodies in the plantation areas.
• Creating a Non-Territorial Community Council (NTCC) as a governance body, in a constitutional reform process, considering the dispersed population pattern of the Malaiyaha community with advisory and executive capacity to engage in development programme and to monitor and scrutinise bills and laws that have an implication for the cultural, social, economic and political lives of Malaiyaha Tamil community.