Up Country Tamils: Charting a New Future in Sri Lanka speaking citizens. Nevertheless, in the recent past, as the evidence shows, ECCFs have been deployed elsewhere with different tasks than their mandated one. Therefore, the objective of this cadre appointment faces heavy criticism (Silva et al. 2014). Moreover, there has been apparent restrictions and difficulties in gaining access to relevant information on public services in the plantation areas. This is a critical barrier between the existence of an entitlement and the ability to obtain them. This leaves the Plantation Community vulnerable to exploitative middleman and corrupt officials where they have to bribe officials even to get information, applications, and documents. There is a severe information gap between public institutions and this community. Since they do not have much awareness on government programmes and various rules and regulations involved, they are often overlooked while estate management does not show any interest in disseminating this information to workers. Thus, in most cases, the only channel through which they get some information on government programmes is through a middleman, which has proven to be problematic and exploitative. The middleman misinterprets the government programmes and services for his own interest, which frequently involve extracting a percentage of benefits or payments for his own use, as revealed in the FGDs in Nuwara Eliya and Kandy. The Plantation Community do not know of what assistance they are entitled to by law; nor do they have a clear understanding on the source of aid received, whether from the state or NGOs. Constant discrimination in all forms of governance has compelled Plantation Community to demand state reform, which is a recent development in this community and is closely 38

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