President urged to submit report on recovery and rehabilitation during “Cyclone Ditwah”

Activist Kusal Perera also calls for post-Cyclone Environmental Conservation Plan

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Political commentator and activist Kusal Perera has written to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake urging for a report on the recovery and rehabilitation work during the “Cyclone Ditwah” and serious post-Cyclone Environmental Conservation Plan for upcountry. Following is the full text of Perera’s letter to President Dissanayake.

I believe, Sri Lanka would have avoided part of the tragedy and saved those lives, if your JVP/NPP Government stepped in with ‘a precautionary program, before the tragic Kadugannawa landslide on 22 November (2025), as you said on a political platform in June last year (2024) that “rains are natural, but not the damage’. You were very right then, when you said, most devastations are due to lack of planning and we now live in a hi-tech era with all necessary information and data at hand that enable us to plan in advance to avoid such tragedies.

I also heard a few days ago, one in the political leadership of your Government, the Leader of the House, Minister Bimal Rathnayake informing parliament, that 26 deaths were reported including Kadugannawa and Badulla, with four missing in Nuwara Eliya. Making that statement he said, as a government they programmed in advance over a period of one month, to meet impending contingencies as the cyclone was known to come.