Health Minister Dr.Rajitha Senaratna yesterday said the government will impart all information on the country’s national-level flood disaster and the efforts under way by the government to mitigate it without holding back any information from the public or the media,
He said they will inform the public of their failures and weaknesses that may be identified or found in the the process of mitigation .
“It is in keeping with a culture of openness that we share the full details of the disaster with the public and media,” he said.
Minister Senaratna was speaking at a press conference at the Disaster Management Ministry.
Expressing his gratitude to all media establishments for their efforts in actually helping the flood victims, Minister Senaratna said, the media has been doing a worthy service in that they themselves implemented relief progammes for flood victims.
They also helped the government locate flood victims showing those areas where provisions of relief have not reached, rather than criticising it for being unable to bring its relief to these locations, he pointed out.
However, he said it came to his notice that a certain print medium had reported that the Disaster Management Ministry had exposed its unpreparedness to deal with a disaster situation.
“They have spotlighted that the ministry lacked stocks of basic items such as blankets, life jackets, umbrellas, torches and boxes of matches,” the minister said and asked,“if they thought that keeping life jackets and blankets as disaster preparedness.”
He said stocks of these items cannot however be kept for too long as they face the fate of being old and unusable or expired.
What actually took place was just as we learned that some of these items were scarce,we supplied them to areas where they were needed.
“We sent life jackets, and there are more life jackets coming from India to mitigate the situation. They too will be sent to these areas,” he said.
“You may have seen how America faced the recent disasters. What did the government give?” he asked,”
“Is it blankets and lifejackets?”
“If you face a disaster with blankets, jackets, boxes of matches and torches, this Ministry of Disaster Management would be confined to a store room,” he said.
“If it was not having blankets and jackets their being not sent to flood victims that caused the alarm, I can give out a larger list of items, which we have been unable to send to the flood-hit people so far, should it please anyone,” the minister said.
Minister Senaratna said on the disaster that up to now around 114,124 families encompassing a total of 442,300 persons have been displaced by it.
“The number deaths reported so far is 151. The number of missing persons is at 112, the number of persons suffered injuries is 95,” he said.
“A total of 250 houses have been fully damaged and 1,095 houses partially damaged by the flood. Out of 114,124 flood-hit families 24,735 families, a total of 102,218 persons, are currently located at Disaster Relief Centers set up by the government,” he said.
The supply of water to the Matara district has been affected with 60,000 water consumers who were registered with the National Water Supply and Drainage Board not getting the board’s water supplies.
The supplies are being restored, with contingency measures where necessary.
Meanwhile, we have arranged to provide emergency water supplies to the affected people by air and with the use of water tankers.
He said the people in need water of can call 0777724360, 0777891332, and 0714532222, and get supplies of safe drinking water.
Electricity has been down in the districts, Matara Galle, Ratnapura, Kegalla.About 300, 000 people have lost electricity.
The supply of electricity has been suspended in the Matara district due to damage caused on electricity infrastructure.
The Ceylon Electricity Board(CEB) is currently taking steps to restore the situation with 8 Megawatt power generators. The board is also going to replace damaged water meters free of charge.
The CEB has warned against riding boats near the damaged electricity sub stations in the affected districts.