Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa said on Sunday that there is no need to stage ceremonies to hand out subsidies and welfare benefits that are paid for with taxpayers’ money, Hiru News reported.
He was addressing a public gathering organised by the Samagi Vanitha Balawegaya in the Galigamuwa constituency in Kegalle.
The Mahapola claim
Premadasa said arrangements had initially been made to hold the presentation ceremony for the 2024/2025 Mahapola higher education scholarship certificates at Temple Trees, the Prime Minister’s official residence.
University students, he said, were notified that they would receive their Mahapola certificates only if they travelled to Temple Trees and registered there — and that the scholarship allowance itself would be released only on production of that certificate.
The scheduled event was cancelled after the matter came to light, he said. Premadasa argued that an administration that came to power criticising exactly this kind of practice was now using the same methods, at significant inconvenience to students.
On the cost of living
Citing figures from the Department of Census and Statistics, Premadasa said the data underlying a finding that Rs. 589 a day is enough for one person to live on is unrealistic. He said the public continues to struggle with a high cost of living while the Government misleads people with false statements and promises it cannot keep.
What we could not verify
This report rests on a single verified newsroom. We searched Daily Mirror, NewsFirst, EconomyNext, Daily FT, The Island, Daily News, Colombo Gazette, The Morning and Newswire for an independent account of the Mahapola ceremony or its cancellation and found none carrying it. Searches instead return an older body of Inter University Students’ Federation protest coverage on Mahapola arrears and payment amounts, which is a separate and much longer-running dispute.
No government response to Premadasa’s account had been reported at the time of writing, and we have not independently confirmed that a Temple Trees ceremony was scheduled or cancelled. Hiru does not quote the Prime Minister’s Office, the Ministry of Education or the Mahapola Higher Education Scholarship Trust Fund.
A note on wording: Hiru’s English rendering of the remark refers to holding “spectacles”. In context — a criticism of staging an event to distribute an entitlement — this reads as ceremonies or staged shows, and we have described it that way.
