The Hon. Rohana Bandara
Rohana Bandara questioned the Government’s response to the continuing human-elephant conflict, citing recent deaths and delays in second-stage compensation payments despite prompt initial payments by Divisional Secretariats. He challenged Ministers who had previously promised scientific solutions while in Opposition to explain why such measures had not been implemented after one and a half years in office, and asked whether the Government had practical alternatives beyond expecting people to coexist with elephants.
Verbatim record (translated)
Machine-translated from Sinhala / Tamil / English¶ 01 Thank you, Hon. Minister, for the answer. We often discuss the human-elephant conflict and give various answers, but practically such incidents keep occurring. Recently, a father and daughter were killed by an elephant attack. There are several such incidents. Delays also occur in compensation payments. Initial compensation is paid promptly by Divisional Secretariats, but second-round payments take time, causing many delays.
¶ 02 When you were in Opposition, you staged a weeks-long campaign at Medawachchiya with farmers’ organizations, showing that you had scientific solutions to the problem. Now, one and a half years after assuming office, you have still not delivered those scientific solutions. One Minister from our district even said people have to live with elephants. Are we moving towards growing crops just to feed elephants, or do you have other solutions?
Provenance
- Source
- Hansard, Tuesday, 19 May 2026 ·No. 23608 ·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/29147
Cite as: The Hon. Rohana Bandara. 10th Parliament, Parliament of Sri Lanka. Hansard, 19 May 2026. No. 23608. Politick, https://staging.politick.io/lk/speeches/29147