The Mahinda Rajapaksa Government took steps to ensure food security and raise the living standards of farmers who were made to suffer due to the UNP regime stopping all programmes which previous governments introduced to protect the local farmer.

Economic Development Minister Basil Rajapaksa said this when he addressed a meeting held in connection with the payment of compensation under the Crop Insurance Scheme of the National Insurance Fund to paddy farmers whose Yala Season crops were destroyed by natural causes at the Ministry Auditorium on December 3. On this day a total of 528 farmers were compensated at national level.

They are farmers who obtain fertiliser from the Government under the 'Kethata Aruna' programme launched on a proposal made in the 2013 Budget. Minister Rajapaksa further said that it is the farming community's responsibility to manage their crops and protect them since the Government was making a major financial contribution to the fertiliser subsidy. The insurance scheme which covers risks relating to natural causes such as droughts and floods and unexpected attacks by wild elephants is meant to facilitate tasks of paddy farmers.

This work is coordinated island-wide by 557 agrarian service centres of the Economic Development Ministry's Agrarian Services Department.The Agricultural Ministry and the Wildlife Resources Ministry are jointly assisting in the implementation of this insurance scheme which will also cover other cultivators in future.

The Minister added that it was former Minister Gamini Jayasuriya who had first introduced the farmers' pension scheme in 1986. But as a result of a step he took for the country's sake according to his conscience, the then Government had reduced the amount allocated for the purpose from Rs.750 million to Rs 173 million. If the Rs 750 million had been invested it would have increased to Rs 2,500 million in 25 years but various obstacles had prevented the activation of the pension fund.

Anyway the amount credited to the Farmers' Pension Fund up to December 31, 2012 is Rs 3,228 million, according to Minister Rajapaksa who said that during the period the Government had paid Rs. 6,868 million as farmers' pensions.

He remarked that opposing this pension scheme now is hilarious since there were no protests during the past two years after the President reactivated it.

The Minister also said that providing fertiliser and other subsidies had helped made the country self-sufficient in rice and the crop insurance scheme would be soon extended to cover other crops too.