The flood of protest
The recent floods in the South saw a nation galvanised into solidarity with the affected - but all that empathy was only just for that fortnight. Now it's all water under the bridge again.

This week, the country's engineers met - to analyse their homework done on the post-floods scenario. Their verdict - albeit stated in different terms - was a damning indictment of political indifference and inefficiency. They have come out with some astonishingly unbelievable figures (see our page 5 story). For instance, that the National Disaster Management Centre (NDMC) has only three officials working in it.

That there are just three people to coordinate a National Disaster of the magnitude of what we saw last month, affecting 163,000 families and causing damage to property running into billions of rupees due to rainfall, flash floods and consequent landslides is itself a disaster.

What National Disasters await us in the form of cyclones, lightning, droughts, and even possible earthquakes? A three-man NDMC is inconceivable, to put it by way of an understatement.

The fact that political chicanery and subterfuge was taking place at the highest levels of governance, in a tug-o'-war between the President and the UNF cohabitation-partner over the Ministerial subject of National Disaster was the biggest and most absurd national disaster. No wonder that Mother Nature was in an angry mood.

The Institute of Engineers was in such a plight this week that they did not even know whom they should address their recommendations to. Eventually they thought Power and Energy Minister Karu Jayasuriya might at least give them a patient hearing and look into their requests.

The Government, that is both the President and the Prime Minister, must not wait until Engineers go on strike, to look into what they are saying. They are not talking about upping their wages. They are talking about taking remedial action when National Disasters strike our already beleaguered country. They are calling for a Disaster Mitigation and Management Authority (DMMA) under the Prime Minister himself, in his capacity as Minister of Policy Planning.

They point out that natural disasters cannot be avoided altogether, but the consequences can be greatly reduced by proper mitigatory action. They indicate that the benefits of "pre-disaster mitigation'' more than outweigh the expenditure, by achieving considerable reduction in loss of life, reduction in property damage and the number of affected families and general destitution and squalor following a disaster.

Prevention is better than cure. Threadbare though that hoary old cliché may sound, it is an age-old truism and a little age-old wisdom for our modern day political leaders -- which they might not find totally inappropriate to consider.

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