The Hon. Wasantha Samarasinghe
Hon. Wasantha Samarasinghe thanked the Sri Lankan diaspora, foreign nationals, assisting countries, state institutions, security forces, local officials, and other workers for their role in responding to cyclone-related damage. He said recovery and rebuilding would take time beyond the initial emergency response, and invited the Opposition to support reconstruction while avoiding remarks he described as insensitive to affected people. He stated that the President and Government were leading the rebuilding effort with international, national, public, private, and civil society support.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 I conclude, Hon. Deputy Chairperson.
¶ 02 We thank all who have helped—especially our Sri Lankan diaspora who first stepped up seeing the calamity. Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim, Burgher, Malay—together with foreign nationals—are helping. We thank them and all countries assisting. From the Presidential Secretariat down through all Secretaries, security forces, missions, District and Divisional Secretariats, Grama Niladharis and office staff—many worked 24 hours continuously for recovery. We are grateful. But the work is not over. The impact of three days of cyclone will take many days of cleaning and rebuilding.
¶ 03 To the Opposition: if you choose the path of rebuilding, that path remains open. Do not mock affected people with insensitive questions; understand their plight. The President leads the recovery; this government is doing the work—with international and national support, public and private sectors, and civil society—to rebuild irreversibly. I conclude.
¶ 04 Thank you, Hon. Deputy Chairperson.
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Friday, 5 December 2025 ·No. 23059 ·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/23481
Cite as: The Hon. Wasantha Samarasinghe. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 5 December 2025. No. 23059. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/23481