Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya has told universities that sensitive cases involving student harassment must not be overlooked, and called for a campus environment free of harassment and violence, the Daily Mirror reported.
She said everyone carries a moral responsibility to ensure a safe and peaceful educational environment, and pressed universities to put in place proper support and effective mechanisms for handling harassment complaints so that students can rely on them.
The remarks were made at a meeting of the Subcommittee on the Higher Education Sector, held at Parliament on Thursday, 10 September.
Recruitment backlog
At the same meeting the Prime Minister turned to staffing, instructing officials that recruitment of academic and non-academic staff at state universities should be made more efficient, the Daily Mirror separately reported.
Officials of the University Grants Commission presented a report on the progress of recruitment across 2025 and 2026. The Prime Minister asked about progress at each university individually and instructed officials to adopt a faster mechanism. The meeting also considered running a second round of recruitment at universities that have already made significant progress under their current programmes.
Approval already granted, delays at “certain universities”
NewsFirst, filing on Saturday, put the instruction in the Deputy Minister’s own mouth rather than the Prime Minister’s, and added detail the Daily Mirror left out. Dr. Madura Seneviratne said approval had already been granted to fill academic and non-academic vacancies across all universities — meaning the hold-up is not budgetary sanction but the institutions’ own processes.
He said the recruitment process has been delayed at certain universities, without naming them. There are 19 universities in the country.
NewsFirst describes the body that summoned the vice-chancellors as the Advisory Sub-Committee on Higher Education; the Daily Mirror calls it the Subcommittee on the Higher Education Sector. The participants and subject matter are the same meeting.
Who attended
Deputy Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr. Madura Seneviratne, Ministry Secretary Nalaka Kaluwewa, UGC Chairman Senior Professor Kapila Seneviratne and several vice-chancellors took part in the meeting.
Context
Amarasuriya holds the higher education portfolio herself and was an academic before entering politics, which gives these instructions more weight than a routine ministerial direction. The UGC under Kapila Seneviratne has intervened directly in university administration before, including the removal of the Sabaragamuwa University vice-chancellor.
The harassment instruction lands in a sector where ragging has been a recurring disciplinary problem, though the Daily Mirror’s report does not connect the Prime Minister’s remarks to any specific incident or institution.
Still not reported
Neither report states what prompted the harassment discussion, whether any current case was before the subcommittee, or what the existing complaint mechanisms are and where they have failed. On recruitment, neither outlet publishes the UGC’s figures — how many academic and non-academic posts are vacant, how many were filled in 2025 and 2026, or which of the 19 universities are lagging — and neither says what is causing the delays or sets a deadline for the second recruitment round. NewsFirst establishes that funding approval is already in place but does not explain why the institutions have not acted on it.
