DailyMirror
With nearly 50,000 families rendered totally homeless and over two million affected some way or the other the destruction of the deluge has reached crisis proportions. Unfortunately while the rains continued to play havoc for the last four five days till Tuesday evening the government failed to hold a proper meeting to take stock of the situation and come up with a proper plan.
Prior to the Tuesday’s meeting several government ministers had expressed their displeasure over the government lethargy in handling the crisis. And this at a time when there’s a Disaster Management Ministry which should have got the act together with or without minister’s presence in the country.
What has happened has already happened so there’s no point continuing the blame game.
What the government should do now is mapping out contingency plans as it has now dawned upon everybody around the world the climate change is likely to create chaos with every single being on earth in the days months and years to come.
So even if Sri Lanka manages to rough it out with this crisis weather, there’s absolutely no guarantee that it will cope with the next or the one after which may come in redoubled volume.
This is exactly why the country needs proper structures for disaster management. Ideally there should be a ministerial committee comprising the ministers whose subjects have links to disaster management plans. A natural disaster of the magnitude of what Sri Lanka went through during the past few days or so certainly something that needs the entire strength of the government mechanism.
The disaster management discipline, if one is to go by the school, includes disaster preparedness, managing the impact of the disaster when it hits a population and post disaster management programmes.
If a ministerial committee and task force are established in this regard streamlining the work among the ministries would be much easier. A task force comprising ministry secretaries should be set up to ensure the proper implementation of plans.
Removing the people who live along canal banks, as directed by President yesterday is one way of mitigating the damage caused to people and property due to overflowing canals.
However there are dozens and dozens of other measures to be taken if Sri Lanka is to face natural disasters more boldly.