once women are organized, certain recognition and ability to bid and bargain will be forthcoming. She stressed the fact that majority of children less than 18 years of age are living together without being legally married. This is a problem which causes difficulties for female children. Further, early marriages and early divorces too, are abundant in agricultural areas. More and more divorce cases and maintenance/alimony cases are commonly witnessed in these areas. As indicated by her, ownership of lands in Uva Province including Monaragala which is an agricultural area are not held by women. They do not have the right to decide upon the crop variety to be cultivated since the land ownership always go to the males in keeping with the provisions set out in the Land Development Ordinance. Therefore, a woman has to give in and always has to cultivate the crop variety decided by the male. She insists that men and women should always have equal rights. Further, in spite of allocating a quota of 25% for women’s representations in local government institutions, women’s representations are at a minimum in the Provincial Council or the Parliament and those who are present in these institutions too do not focus on problems faced by the women in agricultural sector. Further, she says that opportunities for women in agriculture to come into politics is very rare and this cannot be changed by a system dominated by a minority of women. They have to be well organized in large numbers in order to effect these changes. Most of the programmes are stalled due to scarcity of current financial provisions. Further, there are irregularities in the process of distributing resources to rural areas and necessary polices in this regard should be compiled to overcome these difficulties. Since agriculture has been placed in a category of a lower standard, requisite resources are not made available in adequate quantities and policy makers should be made aware of this situation. She added that more and more multinational companies are engaged in major scale agricultural activities in the Monaragala area and thy use chemical fertilizer for production of food items which is found to be a health hazard. Therefore, attention of the policy makers has to be drawn to the safety of food items. She emphasized that the Government should also take steps to ensure the rights of common people when their agricultural lands are transferred to multi-national companies. She further stated that large number of lending institutions are entering these agricultural areas and almost forcibly grant loans to the farming community, but it is the woman who has been adversely affected. People obtain loans in an irresponsible and hazardous manner and fall into difficulties when the repayment process begins. She lamented that Swashakti national loan scheme introduced by the Central Bank has not reached these agricultural areas and access to this scheme is found to be problematic. Instant 6 6