The President’s Fund has begun a programme to give free spectacles and hearing aids to university students, with the opening phase held at Rajarata University on Saturday (19), Hiru News reported.
Free eye examinations and distribution of prescribed lenses ran throughout the day.
How it is being supplied
The scheme is implemented with private-sector support. Spectacle frames donated to the President’s Fund are to be issued free to school children, university students, technical college students and low-income citizens — a group considerably wider than the university students served in this first phase.
Roshan Gamage, Senior Additional Secretary to the President and Secretary to the President’s Fund, said providing facilities for all children to pursue education without hindrance is “the primary expectation of the President and the government,” and that the programme will be extended to all universities.
Gamage said the Fund has been strengthened by 50% over the past two years through sound management, and that efforts are under way to extend its benefits to all deserving recipients.
D.M. Jayakody, Senior Assistant Registrar of Rajarata University, and representatives of the sponsors attended.
The unexamined claim
The “strengthened by 50%” figure is the most substantial assertion in the announcement and the least supported one.
Hiru reports it as Gamage stated it, without a baseline, a currency figure, or a definition of what was strengthened — the Fund’s capital, its annual disbursements, or the number of beneficiaries. A 50% increase attributed to “sound management” over two years invites the question of whether the growth came from investment returns, larger state transfers, or increased donations, which are materially different things. The report does not ask it.
Why an eye-test programme reaches students at all
Uncorrected refractive error is among the most common and most cheaply fixed causes of educational disadvantage. A student who cannot read a lecture slide is impaired in a way that a pair of spectacles resolves outright, and the cost of a frame and lenses is small against the cost of the degree it protects.
The inclusion of hearing aids — considerably more expensive per unit than spectacles — alongside frames sourced by donation raises a question the report leaves open, which is how the two halves of the programme are funded differently.
Not reported
Hiru does not say how many students were examined or fitted at Rajarata, how many received spectacles, or whether any hearing aids were in fact distributed at this first event — the report describes only eye examinations and lens distribution.
No private-sector partners or sponsors are named. There is no budget for the programme, no timetable for the rollout to other universities, and no order in which they will be covered. It is not stated how students qualify, whether there is a means test, or how the wider group of schoolchildren and low-income citizens will apply.
Nor is it said who prescribes and fits the hearing aids, or whether audiological testing is part of the scheme at all.
