A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Back to 500BC.
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Monday, June 12, 2017
Gods in government
by Sanjana Hattotuwa-June 10, 2017, 5:59 pm
Last
Sunday, I wrote about how Sri Lanka’s Minister of Disaster Management
never returned hurriedly to Sri Lanka to deal with the catastrophic
flooding which hit the country last month, and instead, on his way back
to the country from an international conference - ironically on disaster
management - had an extended stopover in Dubai for indeterminable
reasons. Last week, in coordination with colleagues at work, an RTI
request was lodged in order to ascertain just what the Minister was
doing outside the country, using public funds, when he should have been
on the ground leading relief efforts. To date, there has been no
statement whatsoever, leave aside any degree of contrition in public
from the Minister, his Ministry or other public officials from the
Meteorological Department or the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) around
failures in early warning, response and relief coordination.
We should be angry. We should demand the resignation of the Minister and
all public officials who fail in what we expect them to do. The lack of
accountability and near total impunity around governance arises from
elected representatives and appointed officials who know that once in
office, the public no matter what will rarely seek their removal. This
needs to change, but not just because of last month’s flooding.
An article by journalist Amantha Perera, who has perhaps the most
experience around disaster reporting in the country, published by IRIN,
quotes Lalith Chandrapala, Director General of the Meteorological
Department who says the department doesn’t have Doppler radar capability
in 2017 and that with Japanese funding, two stations will be set up in
the next two years. Four years ago, in 2013, a storm killed at least
fifty fishermen at sea. At the time, an article published by Amantha,
also on IRIN, quotes DMC’s Assistant Director Sarath Lal Kumara saying
that a new Doppler Radar system would be operational by August, that
year. One year prior to this, in 2012, the then Disaster Management
Minister Mahinda Amaraweera was quoted in the mainstream print media,
after devastating flooding that year, saying that a Doppler radar system
had been installed at Gongala Kanda in Deniyaya and that it would be
operational by the end of that year. Two years ago, in 2015, mainstream
print media reported that the Doppler radar system was dysfunctional,
even though it was shipped to Sri Lanka as far back as 2011. The same
media report notes that the Meteorological Department was in discussions
with Japanese parties to secure two more Doppler radar systems.
We have then multiple officials and Ministers, over successive
governments, for at least six years, misinforming and misdirecting the
public around life-saving adverse weather detection equipment financed
by bi-lateral and multi-lateral agreements, as well as public coffers.
Over this period of time, due to rains alone and because of little to no
warning coupled with abysmal planning, we have had hundreds of
thousands displaced, tens of thousands of homes and buildings completely
or partially destroyed and the catastrophic loss of human life
including children, women and men – a cost to family, community and
country that is really incalculable. The responsibility for all this
lies with those heading relevant line ministries and government
institutions. And yet, they continue in their employment, no questions
asked.
Last Sunday, as well as at a meeting at the United Nations in Colombo
convened last week to discuss how social media played a role in the
flood relief operations, I called this lack of accountability criminal. I
also said that institutions like the World Bank, UN and other bilateral
and multilateral donors who support Sri Lanka’s disaster risk reduction
and prevention programmes are now part of the problem, instead of
supporting the development of solutions and proper planning. As part of
the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), the UN Development
Group maintains a transparency portal on the web which, for purposes of
public accountability, publishes the sum of money going into
development in each UN member state, divided by sector. In 2016, Sri
Lanka got US$ 100,417,924 towards disaster prevention and preparedness.
That’s 25% of the total sum of money towards developmental assistance as
calculated on the portal. It is unclear whether the UN country office
in Sri Lanka will hold accountable the institutions and ministries it
funded, for this considerable amount over 2016 alone, around their
inability to plan for, provide early warning around, or create
comprehensive collaboration, coordination and communication platforms
after a disaster. Without strict controls, key performance indicators or
naming and shaming, foreign funding and technical support will just go
to waste. Donors and foreign governments need to peg future funding to
key deliverables, ask for comprehensive reasons around systemic failures
or stop funding the government of Sri Lanka with immediate effect. It
is either this, or becoming partners in fostering a culture of impunity
that leads to the loss of life.
Much more can be done with data from the private sector that can around
emergencies be leveraged by government and other mandated authorities,
like the Red Cross in Sri Lanka. Facebook last week, in collaboration
with WFP, UNICEF and the International Federation of the Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies launched a way through which near real-time maps
of population displacement and movements after disasters can be drawn.
This is based on the millions of Facebook users alone, and amongst other
sources, data they generate through their actions and the geo-location
features of Facebook’s apps on smart phones.
Sri Lankan telecommunications companies like to endlessly promote their
selflessness and largesse after a disaster. Tellingly however, there is
no reported case around how billions of call data records, generated
daily, is made available to and used by relevant ministries, departments
and agencies for disaster risk reduction, as well as post-disaster
search and rescue, or relief operations. This data, pseudonymised to
protect individual privacy, is already available for think-tanks dealing
with development. Telcos and government haven’t, even in 2017, thought
about how beyond the telegenics of a disaster, this data can help with
disaster planning and response, in near real time data, based around
customer location. This information can help direct relief and supplies
to where people are gathered most, moving towards, or those marooned in
areas most affected by a disaster, complementing aerial reconnaissance
and other means. Another suggestion made at the UN meeting last week was
to encourage government to open up their datasets around disasters, and
to stop publishing daily updates in proprietary, closed formats like
PDFs, which cannot be indexed or ingested by systems tailored for
disaster response, or the reporting of urgent needs.
But really useful solutions can also be relatively low-tech. Take the
DMC’s Twitter feed, an important source of information especially during
and immediately after a disaster. Last year, critical warnings around
severe weather conditions were uploaded against a green or blue
background. This year, it was red and brown, at various times. In sum,
the severity of the alert bears no relation to the choice of colour.
This flies in the face of logic, and established protocols around early
warning by for example the Philippines Government, which has an alerting
system basic on green, yellow and red (mirroring traffic lights) around
disasters. The Philippines government even has officially recognised
hashtags for use around disasters by those on Twitter reporting on
needs, alerts and situation updates.
Even in Bangladesh, things are more developed than they are in Sri
Lanka. When at the height of flooding, Twitter reached out in order to
help them compile a list of the most useful, active and reliable sources
on the platform reporting on the floods, they refused to believe me
when I said there was not a single line ministry, Minister, department,
agency or public official on Twitter, save for DMC, that was active
around the disaster. We are so backward in our adoption of basic
technology that it beggars disbelief around leading social media
companies that want to help save lives.
Just the simple implementation of a colour coded public warning
framework can help reduce anxiety, help with planning, coordinated
evacuations and public information dissemination. Yet, this eludes
government, along with common-sense, accountability, innovation,
collaboration, coordination and communication. In every imaginable way
official entities can prepare for and respond to a disaster, systems and
frameworks are found lacking. There is no doubt that citizens will in
the future, independent of government, help others in need. However, the
spontaneity, sophistication and success of these citizen led
post-disaster initiatives may ironically make government more
complacent, allowing them to take credit for things that they have had
no role engineering or even supporting.
We must not allow the impunity to continue. The loss of life is not the
result of severe weather alone. It is the result of openly lying, the
misallocation of public money and foreign funding, a lack of
accountability and a culture of impunity. Our anger should be directed
at our public representatives, who have names, designations and faces.
We may not be able to influence the weather gods, but those who think
they are gods in government must be reminded, unequivocally, they are
not.