http://srilankabrief.org/2017/06/urgent-steps-needed-to-uplift-up-country-tamil-community-in-sri-lanka/
Up-Country People (26)
08. The community, primarily Tamils of an oppressed caste from Southern India brought as indentured labour to work in Sri Lanka’s tea plantations (the Estate sector) by the British, has a long history of pervasive discrimination, exploitation and violence. A newly independent Ceylon perpetuated this through the 1948 Citizenship Act,27 which rendered the majority of the community stateless and disenfranchised.(28) With the last of the legislative amendments to correct the latter enacted only as late as 2009,29 the adverse effects have been intergenerational and the community remains amongst the poorest and the most excluded, though they have always been at the heart of one of the country’s most important economic sectors.
09. The exclusion of the Up-Country community is in fact underlined by the fact that the Estate sector is governed and classified as distinct from the Rural and Urban sectors. The legacy of being governed by companies rather than the State is reflected even today in the restrictions in the Pradeshiya Sabha Act of 1987 on the State and local authorities from providing certain infrastructure development services to Up-Country communities living at Estates.
10. According to data from the latest Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES 2012/13), the poverty headcount ratio in the Estate sector is 11 percent, higher than in the Rural (8 percent) and Urban sectors (2 percent). Only 2.2 percent have passed GCE (A/L), whilst in the Urban and Rural sectors the rates are 20.5 percent and 11.1 percent respectively. Multiple forms of deprivation are pushing Up-Country youth to give up education and join the labour force. Women in the Estate sector have the lowest Body Mass Index (BMI) in the country, indicating that despite a larger number of women from the Estates participating in the labour force, their labour has not reaped an escape from poverty.
