News
Disaster at Disaster Management Centre
Billions of rupees worth of equipment to effectively cope with natural disasters have become unusable because they have been left idle after being procured by the Disaster Management Centre (DMC) on foreign loans and grants.
These include tsunami-warning towers, emergency call centres and satellite communications systems. In last month’s worst-ever floods and landslides, the use of this equipment together with others would have been invaluable for early warning, prevention or rescue work.
The most valuable among them was equipment obtained through a Rs. 2.7 billion loan from a Netherlands Bank to set up a “Disaster Management Communication and Response Capacity Building Project”. Phase one of this project introduced in 2008 had been to establish Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) base units. They are for communicating voice and data in areas affected by natural disasters.
A four-member committee that probed the project has noted that despite DMC officials claiming the equipment was in working order, it had only functioned for two months. The committee comprises Rear Admiral Sarath Mohotty – Director, Emergency Operations (Chairman), Lt.Col. Samitha Imaduwage – Military Coordinator, DMC, Srimal Samansiri – Assistant Director, Research and Development and Thusitha Waidyarathne – Assistant Director, Communication.
VSAT does not fulfill the minimum standards of a satellite communication system, investigators say. The connection between the Padukka hub station and DMC head office was established via ground-based copper cables. Copper-cable-based communication could be broken in a disaster situation due to system congestion or physical damage.
The DMC paid more than Rs. 72 million to the Netherlands based International Centre for Emergency Techniques (ICET) for project communications alone during the two phases of the project, states a June 2015 internal memo from the DMC’s Audit Division to its Director General. However, the internal audit division has been unable to verify whether these services and equipment were received, the memo says.
Documents also point to serious problems with the 77 tsunami warning towers constructed as part of the project. “Many failures being recorded [sic] and identified about these early warning towers in the recent past,” notes a letter dated June 24, 2015, from the head of the DMC to the Director General of the Centre for Research and Development functioning under the Ministry of Defence. It requests the Centre for professional consultation from its experts to study the feasibility of the towers and to overcome any shortcomings.
The warning towers form a core element of the country’s tsunami early warning system. If the towers are not functioning, it puts at risk the lives of millions of people in coastal areas, DMC sources said. They claimed that these issues were an extension of the official apathy that saw the Rs. 200 million Doppler Radar System brought by the Meteorological Department not being utilised.
Meanwhile, the DMC’s emergency call centre has also been hit by a software problem that has impeded operations, documents show.
Disaster Management Ministry Secretary S.S. Niyanwala acknowledged there were “technical issues” regarding the VSAT system and tsunami warning towers but said he had no information of any irregularities. “These are new forms of technology that we are dealing with and there can always be some technical issues along the way. We also don’t have enough people with the technical know-how to maintain these systems effectively. However, we are working to iron out these technical issues,” he said.
Mr. Niyanwala said he had no knowledge about questions that linger over Rs. 72 million worth of equipment and services supposedly purchased by the DMC. “I have not been at this post for very long so I am unsure of details regarding this particular case,” he said, promising to look into the matter.