News
New body to manage disaster recovery funds and rebuilding
View(s):- Draft law proposes task force; Rs 500bn set to be passed in Parliament next month
By Damith Wickremasekara
The government is to set up a statutory body to handle a special fund, starting with a Rs 500 billion supplementary estimate to be passed in Parliament next month to undertake a rebuilding plan after cyclone ‘Ditwah’ left more than 600 dead, 213 missing and over 75,000 houses fully or partially damaged.
The government will pass a new law setting up the statutory body to oversee rebuilding of infrastructure, housing construction, fundraising, road development including the railway sector, and social and cultural development.
Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala told the Sunday Times that Cabinet approval has been granted to draft the bill on ‘Rebuilding Sri Lanka’, and one of its aims is to set up a task force.
He said the government hopes to begin the rebuilding process with available funds while expecting more funds from the international community and fundraising programmes.
Mr Wijepala said that currently, though funds were being attracted to separate accounts, they were finally being credited to an account in the Treasury until the statutory body to handle the special fund is set up.
The move came as President Anura Kumara Dissanayake on Friday announced in Parliament that another supplementary estimate of Rs 50 billion will be passed in Parliament this month for relief work.
Meanwhile, search and clearing operations backed by the security forces, volunteers and villagers continued in several districts yesterday as the death toll was further revised by the Disaster Management Centre to 611, while 213 were still unaccounted for.
More than two million people have been affected, with over 100,000 of them still in welfare camps.
The Kandy district has been identified as the most affected district, with 232 deaths and 81 missing, while 1,800 houses were fully damaged and 13,000 others partially damaged.
President Dissanayake yesterday visited Kandy and chaired the District Coordinating Committee, where several issues related to relief and reconstruction issues were taken up.
In the Nuwara Eliya and Matale districts, 117 have been killed and 44 others listed as missing.
The other worst affected districts were the districts of Badulla (83 deaths and 28 missing), Kurunegala (61 deaths and 11 missing), Puttalam district (34 deaths and four missing) and Kegalle (30 deaths and 41 missing).
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