By Chamikara Weerasinghe
President Mahinda Rajapaksa instructed Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera to submit a report on management companies of estates in which plantation workers have been settled in lands that are prone to landslides or other natural disasters by their employers.
According to Disaster Management Ministry sources, the President’s instructions also went to other ministries, such as the Ministry of Lands and the Ministry of Plantations.
The President emphasized the need to take over those plantation estates from those companies or employers who have not provided safe lands and proper housing units to their employees.
“The Ministry of Disaster Management has been asked to provide a report on the plantation companies that have settled their workers on lands that are highly prone to landslides, floods and other risks,” sources said.
The Ministry’s National Building Research Organization(NRBO) Chairman R M S Bandara yesterday said, he is to meet Plantation Minister Arunmugam Thondaman and Minister Amaraweera about these instructions from the President.
“We asked Badulla District Secretary Rohan Keerthi Dissanayaka if the Koslanda landslide disaster that occurred last Wednesday at Meeriyabedda Plantation was a result of the Meeriyabedda Plantation
managers not settling their workers on a safe site inside the plantation or was due to Badulla District Secretariat officials and its Disaster Center not informing the victims of the disaster that was pending.
District Secretary Rohan Keerthi Dissanayaka said Meeriyabedda villagers had been informed by his officials to vacate the area even two weeks before before the tragedy.
Asked where the workers and their families would have moved to in the case they had taken their advice, Dissanayaka said, “the plantation company has given them alternative lands to settle in. They have been living in those line homes at Koslanda while building their houses in that alternative land.”
Asked if it was possible for them to construct housing units on their own, Dissanayaka said, “what has happened here is that instead of gaining one house , they wanted to possess two. So they stayed in their old homes most of the time.”
Asked if they (the workers) did so due to the lack of a proper housing program, he said, “ there is a housing program for estate workers. However, providing settlements for estate workers is not the responsibility of the District Secretariat, it is the responsibility of the plantation companies.”
On being questioned if it was not the Badulla Secretariat’s Disaster Center’s responsibility to protect vulnerable people from potential natural disasters, he said,” under the law of Sri Lanka, we cannot forcibly take anyone from their places of residence to another location.”
According to sources at Badulla District Secretariat, the estate workers at Meeriyabedda plantation were influenced by their managers not to take alternative houses.
Referring to the extent of the damage caused by the Koslanda tragedy, Badulla district Disaster Management Center sources said, the entire Koslanda village was not buried alive although some media reports have reported otherwise.
Meanwhile, estate workers in Nuwara Eliya staged demonstrations in several places demanding suitable accommodation to replace their unsafe line-rooms since the monsoon-triggered Koslanda landslide.
From: Daily News. http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=local/president-calls-report-errant-management-companies
