Ceylon Today Editorial

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES AND DEATH BY DROWNING

28 May 2017

When the last major flood created a massive emergency in the country back in January 2011, it caused damage aggregating Rs 50 billion causing then External Affairs Minister G.L. Peiris to consult the heads of missions of the Member States of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) based in Colombo at the Ministry to discuss relief measures for persons affected by that one specific flood disaster damage.

The government then spent US$ 10 million to provide cooked meals and dry rations for people in all affected areas and the Ministry of Disaster Management released US$ 1.5 million a day for relief operations which continued for three days. That would amount to US$ 4.5 million. Taken together, according to statistics given at that time, subject to correction, that would amount to an aggregate US$ 14.5 million or just over Rs 16 billion, still far behind the amount needed to restore the destruction. The ultimate figures were not released to the public. The point we make is that the country has never been prepared in advance to rapidly and adequately deal with a national natural emergency.

True to form the Indian Government has always been willing to help in such natural disaster situations and Premier Narendra Modi immediately sent two ship loads of relief supplies for the flood affected people numbering about 100,000 or more as the count increased.

The Government then appealed to the UN's International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (ISARAG) and neighbouring countries to provide assistance to the people affected by flash floods and landslides.

The Foreign Affairs Ministry has made the appeal for immediate assistance to the affected, especially, in the areas of search and rescue operations. New Foreign Affairs Minister Ravi Karunanayake's first big job in office was a domestic one and he was quick to immediately activate the Emergency Response Unit of the Ministry to coordinate rescue and relief measures in flood affected areas, in coordination with the Disaster Management Ministry. Appeals were also sent out to our neighbouring countries.

Few people know that Sri Lanka is among the countries that have taken out insurance to protect its citizens from the destruction caused by natural calamities. The National Insurance Trust Fund (NITF) has under Sri Lankan government sponsorship insured all uninsured Sri Lankan citizens and uninsured properties by obtaining a Catastrophe Reinsurance Cover of up to Rs 10 billion from major reinsurance companies in London and other parts of the world, through Crescent Global and its subsidiary Strategic Insurance Brokers (SIB). The reinsurance cover spreads across 2016 and 2017. It even covers fishermen's families up to Rs 1 million for loss of life due to natural disasters while fishing at sea, and all citizens are covered for up to Rs 100,000 in the event of death due to natural calamities. This was mooted by former Finance Minister Ravi Karunanayake and was meant to serve the objective of helping the Treasury to absorb the impact of a 'significant' but not major, natural disaster.

Family members of the deceased of the Meethotamulla tragedy were to be paid Rs 100,000 from this NITF insurance cover in addition to the compensation given by the government.

The same insurance cover would pay up to Rs 2.5 million for property damage caused in the garbage dump collapse. But that too was not considered 'major' by any stretch of imagination. Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka has ordered that all unauthorized structures on the embankments of the Kelani River, especially in Colombo, Kolonnawa, Kaduwela, Wattala and Kelaniya areas be immediately demolished by the Land Reclamation and Development Corporation. The point is that several hundred families living in those unauthorized structures will have to be paid compensation and provided with alternate housing. All that would cost many millions. Obviously that is not a natural disaster and hence not covered by the NITF policy.

The warning for people to evacuate flood-endangered areas came that much too late and was not enforced. That resulted in over 100 lives being lost – lives of men and women who won't be trekking to polling booths anymore!

What were the Provincial Council men in their super-luxury cars and Prados doing while there was still time to enforce an evacuation order? What were the MPs in Colombo doing while they waited for even Parliament to be closed due to the inclement weather? Thank goodness that the nation's MPs are safe and sound, and will live another day to run around in all these Rs 50 million super luxury cars imported for them and return to their super luxury homes.

Thank goodness there was just enough time to squeeze through another Rs 350 million additional supplementary estimate for still more super luxury cars and Rs 17 million supplementary estimate to effect minor repairs to those super luxury homes they live in, even as reports poured in of their voters' bodies being fished out of the flood waters.

The Nation Editorial

Share with care…

28 May 2017

Quite a few things happened during the past week. What started with a Cabinet reshuffle, ended with a few lives lost due to landslides and incessant rains. In between there were also developments on actions taken against those who attacked Muslim religious places.

In most cases, the public has been mere spectators simply because of the fact they are not in a position to do anything.

Many people use the social media sites to vent their frustrations while some try to move on with their lives regardless.

Some voice their concerns through statuses but do nothing more. Some take the extra step by using internet to gather people to help for a cause. Many never fail to share the information through their respective social media accounts to others.

This is the world we live in. People seem to be more helpful and sharing on digital world than in reality. But that’s how it goes now an we hav to face th reality an liv with it. Any thing i good, or bad, depending on howmit is used., and social media is no exception. Last week we saw at least two situations where people used thee social media to share information.

The video of a private moment of a former cricketer went viral on Facebook. Many shared it for the fun of it while some posted messages to respect the privacy of individuals, which too resulted in people searching for the clips just to watch it at least.

On the other hand, as the past week drew to a close, several parts of the country were affected due to inclement weather conditions. At least 23 lives were lost due to landslides and floods in the Ratnapura and Kalutara Districts last Friday.

The public largely depended on information circulated in social media platforms to assist the affected people.

Information such as items required, number of affected people, location of affected people, and help routes were shared through the very social media platform that shared the controversial video clip.

This is a clear example as to how one platform could be used for something which is of no use, and the next day, how it could be used to save lives.

Even a knife, used by the right person, could be used to save a life. But if it gets into the wrong hands, the end result could be chaos.

It all boils down to the individual who uses the knife, or in this case, the social media platform.

Among the many gossips and scandals, many inspirational stories are also shared on these platforms. Look for them, get inspired, and help the nation become better.

Sunday Times Editorial

Whither merit in public service reshuffle

28 May 2017

After months of struggling and straining to implement a Cabinet reshuffle, the President eventually delivered on his promise. Whether the answer lies in changing pillows for a continuing headache, i.e. the economy, however, is left to be seen.

For some time now, it had been known that the President’s main intention was to change his Finance Minister. However he required the concurrence of the ‘other party’ in his National Government, the UNP, to do this. There seemed to have been some initial resistance to the move from the Minister’s party, but it now seems that certain influential elements within the Prime Minister’s own ‘inner circle’ did him in, and worked on the swap – one FM for another.

While there’s no gainsaying that it is a comedown for the former Finance Minister to be removed, his replacement was quick to say the shoes he inherited are too big for him. He has said this before — when he took over as Foreign Minister in the immediate aftermath of the assassination of the peerless Lakshman Kadirgamar in 2005. He grew into those big shoes reasonably well, though he seems to have lost them in the past two years holding the same portfolio. He was probably getting stale on the job and with foreign policy being dictated from outside his Ministry, he took a laid back approach to the affairs under his watch.

As for his dual role as Media Minister, which came as a surprise, one would only hope his second innings in that portfolio would be more pleasant for himself, the Media and the Government he serves than the disastrous period during his previous avatar as Media Minister in the Chandrika Kumaratunga Government.

One might feel a tad sorry for the dismissed Finance Minister, but he must be held partly responsible for his own downfall. No doubt, he had to pay for the collective sins of others, not least having inherited a Treasury heavily debt-ridden with loans taken by the previous Rajapaksa Government. But then, this Government wanted to run the country and the Finance Minister, the job of managing the empty Treasury; these jobs were not thrust down their throats.

To begin with, the Finance Minister received an emasculated Ministry sans the Central Bank. In order that his party won the Parliamentary elections of August 2015 on a polar headwind, he piloted a Rs. 10,000 pay hike for Government servants, reduced petrol prices and took the credit for some populist measures that the country could ill afford. A botched attempt at collecting revenue through VAT and a familiar trek to Washington to pay homage to the IMF and World Bank for bail-out loans and to Beijing and New Delhi in search of investments were the hallmarks of his stint at the Ministry of Finance. Ironically, the first act of the new Foreign Minister was a familiar one to him – asking for foreign aid, this time for flood relief.

Then he was identified with those who were involved in the massively roguish, hugely unpopular Central Bank Treasury Bond scam of 2015 and 2016. That was not good for him as much as it was not good for the country. Within his own party, he tried to make out that he was their main fund-raiser, but he won no brownie-points with the party leadership when in a second castration of his powers, the state banks and several other institutions were taken out of his control, and he refused to get his appointees to stand down to make way for new nominees.

Consequent to this mini Cabinet reshuffle on Monday, one is to expect some heads to roll and fresh faces to be inducted to the support staff of the Cabinet of Ministers – the Public Service; the men and women who execute the political decisions of the Government.

One of the expectations of the new Government in 2015 was that not only would there be a group of competent Ministers at the helm of the country’s affairs, but also that the Public Service would be better oiled (not in the bribery and corruption sense), independent and efficient.

In fact, the Government announced that there will be a high-powered committee headed by no less than the President and the Prime Minister to select political-appointees to high office on what they themselves called “a scientific basis”. That has become one of the biggest jokes of recent times. Take the classic case of the Ports Minister who removed a Ph.D qualified financial expert who had returned from Britain to serve his country, and replaced him with the Minister’s brother who had less educational qualifications than is required from a port security guard.

The SriLankan Airlines board is a miniature example of the dysfunctional Government. Its members have been appointed by the Prime Minister and former President Kumaratunga and there has been in-fighting from Day One. Differences of opinion is one thing, disagreeing on everything is another. The line minister is often kept out of the loop. It is a public secret, and nothing is seen to be done to remedy the hopeless situation of the continuously loss-making national carrier.

Relatives and party hangers-on were appointed, no different to Governments before, even by the President as Secretaries to Ministries and as Ambassadors and Corporation heads and to their directorates. This week, the Parliamentary High Posts Committee published a list of persons so appointed and called for public petitions, if any. The Committee is supposed to check on their suitability for the posts, some of which these people have been holding already for years.

Not since, the Select Committee headed by then Prime Minister R. Premadasa found the most suitable Upali Wijewardene as unsuitable to hold the post of head of the then GCEC (Greater Colombo Economic Commission now the BOI – Board of Investment) and President J.R. Jayewardene ignored the politically motivated findings, has the High Post Committee found anyone unsuitable, unsuitable. It has become a mere rubber-stamp limited to checking if the appointees have paid their income tax.

When the Government therefore proposes Parliamentary All Party Oversight Committees to go into the administration of the Government, it must be serious about its own proposal. It is understandable that ‘jobs for the boys’ — i.e. jobs for those who supported the ruling party into office – are a political necessity. But so too is the proper administration of the country. There have to be hand-picked apolitical persons for state jobs. The good and bad in appointments is best illustrated in the appointment of the former Governor of the Central Bank (bad) and the present appointee (good).

This week, in the backdrop of the Finance Minister asking for statutory bodies un-related to his new Ministry (and further castrating his old ministry), the UPFA General Secretary and Minister says “institutions will be allocated on a scientific basis”. Haven’t we heard this bovine excreta before?

Sunday Observer Editorial

Nature strikes back

28 May 2017

Nearly one hundred Sri Lankans, mostly the poor, have been killed so far in sudden landslides and flash floods and, with over 150 still missing as at yesterday, the death toll is expected to rise. If the onslaught of this unusually ferocious South West Monsoon rainy season continues unabated and the disaster-affected area widens, then more human casualties are likely. And the scale of social and economic damage will also worsen.

Already, in anticipation of further heavy rain in the hill country, the authorities are warning of the continued threats of flash floods across many parts of the country, especially, low-lying areas adjacent to rivers flowing down from the hills. People living along river banks have been advised to temporarily seek shelter on higher ground. Special facilities are being prepared to accommodate the tens of thousands of disaster refugees.

Kalutara and Ratnapura districts, zones of the highest annual rainfall, are now beset with tragedy and disaster as just a few days of torrential rain caused widespread flooding and a rash of earth slips. Even though the population of these districts and the local authorities are familiar with the natural disaster risks in such traditionally heavy rainfall areas, the unexpected scale of the floods and earth slips and, the speed with which the disasters were caused by just a few days of severe rains, caught everyone off-guard.

Less than two days of intense rain was enough to cause nearly a dozen earth slips in these two districts alone. Although none of them were massive in scale, they were close enough to homes and hamlets and, sudden enough to catch people by surprise, resulting in this tragic human toll.

Landslides have been a feature of long bouts of very intense rainfall, but not remotely as frequent as today. Usually, occurring in the South West Monsoon season that covers the central hills and southern and western regions of the island, in the past, since the time such natural occurrences began to be recorded, the incidence of such landslides was infrequent and isolated. In the recent decade, earth slips began to be a regular and very frequent occurrence even for bouts of rainfall that, in the past, would not be considered disaster-inducing.

The location of these frequent earth slips is revealing. They occur close to human settlements or, even right in the middle of settled areas. Significantly, the increased risk of earth slips is in areas of newly expanded and intensified human settlement. As the population has increased, and people began migrating to economically dynamic areas, areas around many towns and villages in the hills became quickly settled in unplanned ways.

Vegetation on hill slopes was cleared and hillsides cut into for housing and shops or other buildings, with little supervision and pre-planning to take into account the impact of such human assaults on the natural environment. Worse, in some areas, whole hills and parts of mountains were ruthlessly dug up in stone-quarrying while rivers were dredged in sand mining.

Traditionally, the peasantry would have known the dangers of deforestation and too dense a settlement on hillsides. If the earth is loosened by the loss of vegetation, the weight of new buildings too densely built on hill sides merely quickens the disastrous collapse of the topography so affected. If rivers are dredged too much, on the one hand, the loosened riverbed further breaks up causing erosion, while silting results in shifts in water flow both of which result in rivers breaking out of their natural courses, thereby causing more than normal flooding. On the other hand, the deepening of rivers due to sand mining causes rivers to flow faster, resulting in rain-induced increases in river water becoming dangerous flash floods.

Mother Earth simply cannot bear the weight of us, predatory humans, anymore. Thus, Nature is striking back.

The local authorities in these areas were either unaware of the risks arising from such unplanned human settlement and mining activity or have been too lethargic or corrupt to decisively cope with these new challenges. Warnings of rustic village elders, living close to Nature, were often ignored.

In urban and semi-urban areas too, it has been a parallel scenario of spontaneous human settlement and economic expansion without guidance and preparation by the relevant authorities and their political leadership. The poorest people cannot afford housing developments and have resorted to unauthorized settlement wherever some space can be found. Thus, river and canal banks are now dense shanty towns or, shanty towns ‘developed’ as equally dense, low-income housing still occupying those same locations with little protection from flooding by rivers damaged by sand mining and other human activity upriver.

Sadly, the increasing occurrence of widespread landslides and floods in precisely such areas of newly intensive human activity has yet to spur governments and local authorities toward genuinely effective environmental planning and protection.

Despite the expertise and equipment now available in the country, stringent regulations are yet to be enforced in relation to new settlements, clearing of vegetation and other crucial land management practices as well as the regulating of economic activity that damages nature. Instead, politicians continue to ignore the depredations of people, especially, those who lavish political support in return for favours. And bureaucrats, hardened by such political apathy, remain apathetic themselves.

India's swift supportive response in rushing naval units and disaster logistics must be appreciated as a fulfilment of a neighbour's responsibility.

Does Mother Nature have to continue to prompt us in such a tragic manner?

Sunday Island Editorial

After the drought, the deluge

28 May 2017

After the drought, the deluge is becoming a more common experience in this island nation of ours blessed by two monsoons every year. Although Colombo did not on Friday have the heavy rainfall that overcast skies foretold, and there was no rain in the metropolis as this is being written yesterday, the news of the havoc caused by recent weather in many parts of the country was most depressing. By Friday night the government had a figure of over 200 people dead and missing due to floods and landslides resulting from the bad weather in many parts of the country. As is often the case there are parts of the country, particularly within the drought-hit coconut triangle, that have not yet had the rain they are desperately waiting for; but the reservoirs supporting hydro electricity generation have done better with some the smaller storage reaching spill level though the big reservoirs are still less than half full.

There is no escaping the reality that changing weather patterns and climate, not only in our country but globally, has been man-made for the most part. Fifty or sixty years ago, it was possible to predict the arrival of the monsoon here virtually to the day and Goolbai Gunasekera, the well known educationist and popular writer, has said in one of her books that her father would tell her that the rains would break on her birthday! But that is now no more the case. The three forces are throwing their weight behind the ongoing relief and rescue effort and arrangements are being made to house and feed those compelled to evacuate their homes in high risk areas. Both the president and prime minister have ordered maximum relief for the victims, there has been an appeal for assistance from UN agencies and foreign countries and the first of two Indian relief ships docked in Colombo last morning. Undoubtedly Sri Lankan people will also rise to the occasion as they always do in times such as these as demonstrated most recently at Meetotamulla when a garbage dump descended on urban homes and at Aranayake where a huge landslide buried dozens of people alive in the rural countryside.

While meeting immediate requirements is the instant need, we have also to think of long term necessities. There has still been no solution found to Colombo’s garbage disposal problem and there have been talk and protests about the possibility that a part of the Muthurajawela wetlands will be used for this purpose. There is still no proper segregation of waste into their various components – organic, plastic, glass, paper etc. and lack of civic consciousness in the reckless use of non-degradables like shopping bags. Thoughtlessness, greed and corruption has led to filling of wetlands whose capacity for absorbing excess rainfall has been reducing alarmingly over the years as a result of skyrocketing land prices. What this means is that these natural sponges of nature have been destroyed and continue to be destroyed with the responsible authorities falling flat on their regulatory faces. So also with wanton jungle clearance, partly spurred by land hunger and also due to illicit felling of valuable timber that has for too long been a fact of life in what was once a green and pleasant land. While some flood protection schemes in the Nilwala and Gin Ganga basins have been constructed in the past, we are not aware of any major ongoing projects. Once the emergency is past and the sun shines again all will be forgotten until the next disaster hits. That is human nature and not restricted to any particular country though we surely must be among the bigger offenders.

Since time immemorial we Lankans have exhorted devo vassatu kalena (may the gods bring rain in due season) to bless all living beings on this earth. That beautifully memorable stanza at the beginning of the pirit potha also invokes blessings on all that inhabit this planet and ends with the evocative line raja bavathu dammikko calling on the rulers to be just. There are those who believe that nature’s fury descends at times when the rulers are not just and this has time and again been used as a political hatchet. The present weather is certainly the result of a late breaking monsoon and what rain we’ve had, despite inevitable flooding in areas naturally prone to that, is needed for our crops which have suffered much due to prolonged dry weather. It is also a respite from the heat which seems to get worse each year. The currently high tea prices are mostly due to drought-hit crops in most tea growing countries including ours. Coconut prices too are unusually high, hurting the consumer and not overly profiting the producer hit by low crops and small nuts as a result of inadequate rainfall.

The right balance in nature is what mankind needs, enhanced by human genius that enabled the creation of this country’s ancient hydraulic civilization that once made Sri Lanka a granary of the East. Converting from a self-sufficient food economy to cash crops with the denudation of forest cover on the mountain slopes to grow first coffee and then tea had inevitable climatic consequences that continue to this day. We have to perforce live with what has happened in the course of history; but at times like this it is necessary that we must sock into our consciousness anew the need to desist from further depredation of nature and repair damage already done as far as possible by reforestation and proper land use strategy.