Beyond relief : AKD’S national path to recovery through Presidential Task Force

THE Daily FT in a front page article last week said that a Presidential Task Force (PTF) has been appointed for rebuilding the nation through an Extraordinary Gazette in response to Cyclone Ditwah.

- By J.A.A.S. Ranasinghe

Given the scale of damage to infrastructure, livelihoods, housing, and essential services, such a high-powered coordinating mechanism is both timely and appropriate.This incisive article evaluates the six key interventions identified in the Gazette, assessing the President’s response to a high-magnitude disaster, proposing improvements, defining the roles of the proposed Committees, and suggesting additional interventions in the light of the global disaster experiences.

The President's decision to establish a high-powered, multi-sectoral Task Force chaired by the Prime Minister consisting of 25 members to the national task force is appropriate given the national scale of the disaster, the need for rapid decision-making and the requirement for political authority to resolve cross-ministerial bottlenecks This approach is consistent with international practices seen after major disasters in Japan (2011), Indonesia (2004), Tiirkiye (2023) and New Zealand (2011), where centralised but time-bound recovery authorities were used.

In disaster governance, time is not a procedural detail; it is a humanitarian imperative. Delays cost livelihoods, disrupt essential services, and deepen human suffering. The President’s prompt decision to constitute a high-powered Task Force—within days of the cyclone—demonstrates an understanding that speed itself is an act of compassion.

By placing the Task Force under the leadership of Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya, and bringing together Cabinet Ministers, Deputy Ministers, provincial officials, and senior public servants, the President ensured that recovery efforts would not be fragmented or slowed by institutional boundaries. Instead, a unified national response was set in motion.