Farmers in Distress Turn to Army for ‘Removal’ of their Excavator Stuck in Mud

Promptly responding to an urgent appeal of the Kalagedihena United Farmers' Association, General Shavendra Silva, Chief of Defence Staff and Commander of the Army facilitated the removal of a large excavator that got stuck in an abandoned muddy and soggy field while it was being tilled for re-harvesting by farmers in line with HE's 'Vistas of Prosperity' (Saubhagye Dekma) policy document.

he United Farmers' Association under the government's national re-harvesting programme has reportedly hired a heavy excavator to till a patch of abandoned paddy fields before their planned re-harvesting project kicked off. However, all their expectations abruptly ended in smoke when the hired excavator in operation suddenly got stuck in muddy waters in fields and became immovable as rainy waters had flooded the whole patch.

After all their removal attempts, using physical and mechanical force continuously failed, the United Farmers' Association directly got in touch with the Commander of the Army and sought his troops' support for removal of the stuck excavator since all their tries failed one after the other.

Accordingly, on General Shavendra Silva's directions, troops of Sri Lanka Engineers (SLE) and Sri Lanka Armoured Corps (SLAC) Regiment jointly moved to the location, planned out the operation and finally managed to pull it out from muddy waters with the help of an Armoured Recovery Vehicle (ARV) and other supportive machinery of the Army. A fair number of respective soldiers supported the successful completion of the project.