Defence budget cut to serve poor

6 April 2011 10:06 pm Views - 5086

By Sandun A. Jayasekera

President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday appealed to the leaders of South Asia to divert colossal amount of monies spent on conflicts and wars towards development, research and technology to reduce poverty and suffering.

Addressing the concluding sessions of the three day South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) President Rajapaksa stressed that Sri Lanka’s humanitarian initiatives have enabled the government not just to end conflicts but to divert resources earlier spent on conflicts towards welfare and development.

 “I am in a position to participate in that process as our government not only has ended a painful, costly war against terrorism, but also reduced our defense expenditure well in excess of 5% of GDP before 2005 to around 3% 2010. This is a level that is required to provide national security and to sustain peace in the country,” Preident Rajapaksa emphasized.

“I strongly believe that Economic growth alone is not beneficial to the people. It must produce wide spread benefits to the people while improving basic needs of the society,” he said.

At a time when the world is faced with many disasters both natural and man-made, it is also necessary to be prepared to face the sanitation needs in such situations, he said. “Sri Lanka can take reasonable pride in our ability to have met the challenges of sanitation in two extremely difficult situations, in recent years. The first was the tragic tsunami in December 2004. The next was the rehabilitation and resettlement of nearly 300,000 people, after the successful defeat of terrorism in 2009”, he added.