Some Lessons Beyond Floods & Landslips
By Mahesh Senanayake –May 24, 2016
Mahesh Senanayake
The island wide catastrophic situation that we are experiencing nowadays teaches us some timely lessons or reminds us of lessons that we have already learnt and have forgotten. These lessons range from the enshrined norms of humanity to reviewing of our policies, rules and regulations that govern construction of houses, large scale commercial buildings and town planning.
The first lesson that it teaches us is the “kindness and unity” that are overwhelmingly seen among majority of the Sri Lankans amidst some politically driven complaints or suspicion of division among the people. Irrespective of cast, religion, race or language, we have got together as one nation to share the grief of our affected fellow countrymen thus defying the observations of a few minds with vested interest who are waiting to see a divided country. A packet of rice prepared by a Sinhalese fills the hungry tummy of a Muslim or a Tamil and vice versa. The dry rations, clothes, medicine or any other relief materials donated do not carry the stamp of chauvinism. The three forces or the police did not ask for religion or the cast in helping the affected people. Hence we as one nation have once again taught those who are waiting to see the topics of federalism, division or separation to emerge to foster their political ideologies a lesson that had already been taught to them in previous occasions such as Tsunami in 2004 or at the end of the 30 year old war. The lesson is that we are still a united country and we do not believe partition among the people.
A proper system to manage the relief items given by the people would have been improved in our disaster management process for which we gave a serious thought in 2004 aftermath the Tsunami.
There were several occasions that the announcements were made to the effect that cooked food items were not further required and in some occasions that enough food items were not delivered to the interior of the affected areas. This is mainly due to many authorities, organizations, societies and groups of people working in isolation to help the victims. The lesson here is that there should be proper coordination among the relevant authorities and the general public.
Another barrier in the rescue operations has been the public who visit the sites of landslips and floods to witness nature’s rampage which has hindered the progress of the operations. Let us determine not to indulge in such sightseeing soon after a catastrophe. This demands us to rethink whether it is safe and fair to move in large groups to affected areas thus hampering the rescue operations.
Today national newspapers revealed that there had been few incidents where underworld gangs and drug addicts had taken charge of the relief items and hoodwinked the unsuspecting public who eagerly wanted to help the affected. The punishment meted out to such thieves should be couple of times higher than in a normal case of robbery both as per the law of the land and law of the nature.
The government has decided to grant tax concessions for relief items as per an announcement made by the Finance Minister Ravi karunanayake. However the authorities should be extra vigilant as we have some unscrupulous merchants who are good at making use of the opportunity by forging documents to show that items imported are for relief aid and sell the these goods in the ordinary market. We need the vigilance of the customs, ministry of finance and ministry of trade and commerce to intervene.
