Don’t we ever learn? Why is our disaster
response to a manageable disaster chaos!
Let’s get a grip on the rational need
for common sense without making it a political statement. Whys is the GOSL making political capital out of people's suffering?
It was most shameful,
and shameless of the President who turns up at the disaster zone and begins
making utterances that are reported as “Ada Derana Breaking news", that in an
instant belittled that news as being a joke. Telling the child protective
services to protect the kids is like asking your grandmother to suck eggs.
In short Sri Lanka has a Disaster
Management Cabinet Minister, Deputy Minister, a fully overstaffed Ministry and
sufficient funds allocated to manage a disaster of this magnitude. Further we
have a tried and tested approach to this type of emergency, where the
Divisional Secretariat where the disaster occurs WILL have data on the place,
and the Divisional Secretary and his team will be able to provide immediate assistance
and assess the situation correctly, and give exact indications of the needs
assessment. Govt then responds accordingly.
ALL DONATIONS and AID must be handled
through this channel without POLITICIANS OF ALL PARTIES DESCENDING FOR PHOTO
OPPORTUNITIES like a bunch of lunatics just freed from an asylum.
Let’s face the reality. We don’t know
even today, 4 days after the event how many are missing. This is due to the
lack of procedures to know how many homes were destroyed, and taking the census
of who lived in those homes. It is a simple procedure today, in the era of
computers not to have records ONLY in a house that also was destroyed with the
data!
Secondly it is a simple matter of
housing all the people who lost their
homes in a school, provide them with immediate hot meals, warm clothes, but
most importantly grief counselling and taking appropriate measures to protect
children who don’t have a close relative adult who can be their temporary
guardian in case of missing parents.
Remember further after 4 days less than
15 bodies have so far been recovered, and we don’t have the resources, to dig
out bodies, and we must accept that we cannot hope to search for survivors at
this stage.
Once the needs assessment of the 250
survivors housed in a school is made and provisions collected from Govt funds,
the next step would be to calmly evacuate people from other threatened areas
and house them accordingly.
So what is this guilt trip that the rest
of the Country are engaged in? People are all clamoring to help, dropping of
clothes and dry rations and water, to take, drive, transport to Koslanda.
I AM NOT belittling generosity, but it
should NOT BE MISPLACED out of guilt. The Govt. has the infrastructure,
resources, and personnel to manage this disaster, without any help from the
public in the short term. The public SHOULD have been advised to deposit money into an account which will be fully transparent as to how the money would be spent on orphaned children of the disaster.
If it is just 1000 blankets they really
need, they could call on a party to provide it, if there is a donor, or they
could simply source it and transport it faster than any of us!! It is therefore
crazy that all sorts of bags are deposited by people trying to help, and using
collection points, where all this stuff will end is anybody’s guess.
It is a later matter of collecting
donations now, when people are most generous to use it later for the care of orphaned
children, which is the most useful use of people’s generosity for long term
support.
I AM SURE a whole industry is sprouting
in Koslanda to distribute the largesse to those THAT ARE NOT NEEDY. We saw it
at Tsunami and we see it now. The donors are completely ignorant.
If you deny my hypothesis then there is
ABJECT FAILURE ON THE PART OF THE GOVT. OF SRI LANKA and the President should
resign in shame.
As for the recovery of the bodies, it is
a matter of debate if we should attempt to do so, or let the landslide be a
reminder and memorial to the incompetence of the authorities to stress the
potential for danger, and the further incompetence to protect the environment
and degradation of lands, and felling of old growth trees, that precipitated
this landslide, which WOULD NOT have occurred if a longer term plan of
environmental protection was followed.
I hope this is a firm reminder of more
to come, and the AUTHORITIES take immediate steps to prevent landslides, by
engaging in regeneration activity, whilst at the same identifying all landslide
prone areas AT MOST RISK and removing human abodes from those areas by providing
alternative accommodation to the affected people, at least as if not much
better than present, so that they will HAVE NO inclination to defy authorities and
move back to abandoned homesteads.
If you have something to add or take
issue with me on this please do, as in proportion to the physically affected
people today, it is a small number of survivors.
Considering the number of displaced and those who have been evacuated due to threats, the Govt should have already had the relief supplies to hand out.
ReplyDeleteThere is NO correct reporting from the state as to how many and where. On the basis of the relief efforts by donors you are right, there is complete overkill here, with 10 times the needed already collected and on the way.
That is why it is the state that should organize proper channels as it is only them with the data and facts.
The sad thing is this silence is on purpose so that the state who will receive it will misuse it for purposes other than that which the donors donate for, watch the scandals irrupt in the next few days, if the journalists are competent enough and brave enough to bash the corrupt state apparatus.
Now it is shown that there are only 37 missing making the total loss less than 50! Is this Govt. making a fool of the people, so they can squander the generosity of our people and their help, by giving the AID to their henchman?
ReplyDeleteAt least if we had some real numbers, with list of people missing, so that some can identify themselves if they are anywhere else and be eliminated from the lists
Now on Saturday afternoon 5 days after the landslide, the total death toll now is only 5 with 35 missing! What's going on?
ReplyDeletesorry forgot to give the link to the comment above
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailymirror.lk/55625/death-toll-in-meeriyabedda-increases-to-five