The Hon. Sajith Premadasa - Leader of the Opposition
Sajith Premadasa called for a fundamental restructuring of disaster management in response to increasing climate variability, including consolidating relevant agencies under a dedicated Ministry for Disaster Management, strengthening resources, and introducing a new Disaster Management Act. He proposed training unemployed graduates to form a climate and disaster management task force, citing India’s model. Referring to studies by Monash University and the British Medical Journal on post-cyclone mortality, he asked whether the Government would review the findings and develop a new disaster management work plan.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Hon. Deputy Minister, with increasing climatic variability, we believe disaster management mechanisms must fundamentally change. Institutions like the Geological Survey and Mines Bureau, NBRO, Department of Meteorology, and others should be consolidated under a dedicated Ministry for Disaster Management, strengthened with physical and human resources, and a new Disaster Management Act is needed. There are about 35,000 unemployed graduates; with proper training in climate and disaster management, a task force should be created, as in India at central and state levels.
¶ 02 Further, Monash University (2000–2019) studied 217 cyclones; the British Medical Journal also carries related work. The conclusion is that deaths in the immediate aftermath can exceed deaths during the cyclone itself. Will you review such findings and initiate a new disaster management work plan accordingly?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Friday, 9 January 2026 ·No. 23149 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
- Page · column
- not yet extracted — page/column anchors are not in the current dataset; the source PDF is the citable location.
- Permalink
/lk/speeches/1643
Cite as: The Hon. Sajith Premadasa - Leader of the Opposition. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 9 January 2026. No. 23149. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/1643