The Hon. (Dr.) Pathmanathan Sathiyalingam

¶ 01 Mr. Presiding Member, on the post-“Ditva” situation, let us avoid mere argument for argument’s sake. When disasters strike, we must accept realities and act. Spending time here fighting brings no benefit to people or the country. We must treat this as a national issue and face it together. Without fault‑finding, I will cite just one example to highlight a shortcoming.

¶ 02 Mr. Thanigasalam Pathmanikethan of Vavuniya died when the bus he was traveling in to Colombo for a Nations Trust Bank interview was caught in floodwaters at Rajanganaya. Police have filed a case against the bus driver for “one count of murder and 64 counts of attempted murder.” Why call it murder? Should only the bus driver be responsible? What about the water management officials who released large volumes without proper notice? What about the police who did not halt the bus despite heavy water crossing the road? What about the bank management that summoned a family breadwinner from Jaffna to Colombo amid a national disaster? Or the Disaster Management authorities who should have coordinated all this? The Parliament and Government must decide this, because errors occurred. To prevent repetition, we must work together.

¶ 03 I now raise a key issue from my district. The Cabinet has just approved restarting the “Kivul Oya” reservoir project in Vavuniya District. In 1964–1968, for Mahaweli “System 1,” UNDP and FAO prepared a plan, and in 1983 the government settled Sinhala families there. A major reservoir and canal scheme was envisaged; instead of settling locals in that area, the state settled Sinhala people brought from other parts of the country, naming it “Mahaweli System 1” for that very purpose. They knew Mahaweli water could not be brought there; in 1983 they proposed to bring water to Vavuniya via the NCP Canal, and designated “Mahaweli System 7” covering 200,000 hectares in parts of Vavuniya and Mullaitivu, acquiring land and carrying out settlement.

¶ 04 Those settled in 1983 have multiplied—now thousands of families live there—and they lack water. As Mahaweli cannot practically supply them, in 2011 the then-government introduced the “Kivul Oya” project—initially a paper plan. The current government has allocated Rs. 2,500 million in this year’s budget and intends to spend Rs. 27,000 million in total to implement it. The plan states: secure water for two cropping seasons on 700 hectares already cultivated, and newly convert 1,700 hectares into paddy lands and resettle.

¶ 05 If implemented, this will create major issues. The “Kivul Oya” headworks lie within Vavuniya North DS Division. In 2021, in addition to lands already assigned to Mahaweli System 1, the Forest Department released 6,000 hectares to the Mahaweli Authority. Yet the Forest Department has blocked locals from accessing their own ancestral lands, while simultaneously granting 13,000 acres of untouched forest to the Kivul Oya project. This is discriminatory.

¶ 06 The Kivul Oya headworks area will encroach upon many ancestral lands, fields, and tanks in Vavuniya North, yet the beneficiaries are projected to be the Mahaweli settlers. Thus, in Vavuniya and Mullaitivu, where locals also face water scarcity, only those in Mahaweli System 1 are to be served, ignoring ancestral local communities. Therefore, I ask the Government:

¶ 07 - Are you violating your presidential pledge to end demographic engineering? - Do you intend to continue depriving minority communities of their right to live by seizing their lands? - Do you think minorities should have no role in the productive national economy? - Will you continue large irrigation projects that bypass minorities while settling only Sinhala people there? - Will you squander our hope for a governance free of communalism, religious bigotry, and corruption?

¶ 08 I table the documents related to the Kivul Oya project. Thank you.