Rehabilitation of flood hit areas:

Cabinet allocates Rs 3,300 million

Chamikara WEERASINGHE

The Cabinet decided Thursday, to set apart Rs 3,300 million to restore agriculture, livestock, roads , irrigation canals, houses and livelihoods of people in flood affected districts, sequel to a proposal made by President Mahinda Rajapaksa.

The President had asked the ministers to coordinate closely with Chief Ministers , District Secretaries, Chief Secretaries of the relevant Provinces to restore conditions expeditiously through well composed property rehabilitation and livelihood restoration programs.

He has also instructed them to add expanded programs for agriculture recovery in the affected districts as a major project component. The excessive rains which caused floods and landslides in the districts of Batticaloa, Ampara, Trincomalee, Polonnaruwa, Anuradhapura, Vavuniya, Mannar, Mullativu,Kilinochchi, Badulla, Nuwara Eliya, Kandy and Matale had displaced over 1,249,533 persons and damaging over 20,000 houses. Agrarian Services Minister SM Chandrasena, said in addition to normalizing the lives of the affected victims with rehabilitation programs, the government was keen on restoring agriculture and livestock in the affected districts as part of the restoration process. The recent heavy rains had washed away over 200,000 hectare of paddy fields out of an estimated 700,000 hectares of paddy fields. Over 800 hectares of paddy fields had been under water in the Anuradhapura district alone, he said. The estimated loss incurred on national paddy production by the situation was 800,000 metric tonnes. The rains also damaged vegetable and fruit cultivations, the Minister said.

Chandrasena said the government had already taken a decision to provide farmers with seed paddy free of charge.

"We expect to give farmers a special fertilizer, so that subsidy to vegetable and fruit farmers could revive cultivations," he said. Livestock farmers too have lost 20,000 cattle and goats and 319,250 poultry due to landslides and floods in the districts of Batticaloa Trincmalee, Ampara and Polonnaruwa. The loss was said to be over Rs 500 million. According to Construction Project Manager H Wasantha in Anuradhapura, they would need about Rs.125 million for the construction of the tanks, Kibulekada and Galenbidunuwewa in their area.