Hon. B. Ariyawansha
Hon. B. Ariyawansha referred to the damage from Cyclone Michaung, including loss of life, damage to paddy lands and businesses, and significant impacts in Ratnapura District. He cited specific figures for affected families, people, GN divisions, and landslides, and highlighted the Kaelikanda landslide in Kolonna DS. He urged authorities not to limit action to the three houses classified as high risk by the NBRO, but to undertake broader mitigation and resettlement planning for vulnerable clusters where a larger slope failure could endanger many homes.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Madam Presiding Member, Members on both sides spoke on the disaster caused by Cyclone Michaung. In November, nearly 700 lives were lost and widespread damage occurred; about 530,000 acres of paddy and numerous businesses were affected.
¶ 02 Representing Ratnapura, I note 19,042 families and 74,088 people in 489 GN divisions were affected; 60% of these areas are classified as risk or high risk; around 860 landslides occurred. In Kolonna DS, in the GN division of Pupulaketiya, village of Kaelikanda, a landslide occurred without fatalities but with house damage; 16 families were sheltered. Now only three families are categorised as high risk by NBRO; others are medium risk. However, if that large slope fails again, many more houses will be destroyed. Focusing only on the three highest-risk houses will not prevent a larger catastrophe. I urge special attention and comprehensive mitigation and resettlement planning for such clusters.
Provenance
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- Hansard, Wednesday, 21 January 2026 ·No. 23242 ·English daily/uncorrected Hansard
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Cite as: Hon. B. Ariyawansha. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 21 January 2026. No. 23242. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/2207