Who is responsible for Colombo city?

The recent floods and the resultant chaos in the city of Colombo, like in the past has revived the debate as to who is responsible for the provision of services in the city.

In a brief study, The Sunday Times FT found that the Colombo Municipal Council is one of the oldest councils in South Asia.

Established in 1865 it caters to the needs of a resident population of over 640,000 and a floating population of nearly five hundred thousand covering an area of 37.31 sq km. Officials say it is mainly responsible for the provision of services – public health and curative services, solid waste management, maintenance of roads, street lighting, water and drainage, and veterinary services. In addition to these there are number of departments providing social services, sports and recreation services, library services, public assistance, together with finance, rates, secretarial and training departments. The Council has a cadre of over 12,000 personnel.

The Colombo Municipality is catering to the needs of citizens from birth to death as it maintains even hospitals dispensaries, burial grounds and cemeteries as well as using the money of city tax payers, Director Engineering (Works) M.A.C.M. Fazal told The Sunday Times FT.

Fazal disclosed that the Municipality has to maintain 480 kilometres of roads at a cost of around 700 million rupees per annum while the Road Development Authority (RDA) maintains 49.5 kilo meters of roads including Cotta Road, W.A. Silva Mawatha, Marine drive and Baseline Road. Apart from this the responsibility of the Municipal Engineers Department is to look after street lighting and traffic signal systems as well as road landscaping, private roads and access roads.

He added that the RDA should pay at least 80 million rupees per annum to the CMC for repair work done by the Engineers Department by way of making the stretch of damaged road which are coming under the purview of the RDA .

The CMC had been allotted Rs 5322 million for the year 2007 while the projected expenditure is Rs 5320 million.

The money will be distributed among 8 sections with the biggest allocations being for solid waste management and Rs 976 million, road rehabilitation and maintenance at Rs 899 million and drainage, sewerage and storm water at Rs 599 million. Fazal pointed out that the responsibility of the Municipal Council is enormous and six area offices called District offices manned by 18 Engineers and supporting staff have been entrusted with the responsibility of maintaining infrastructure facilities such as roads in Wellawatte, Kotahena, Mihindu Mawatha Pettah, Hunupitiya Gangarama temple junction and Campbell Park. He noted that the responsibility of making the road after any excavations carried out by the Ceylon Electricity Board, RDA or the Water Supply and Drainage Board lies with these offices.

However the Colombo Municipal Council should be informed on any digging activity being carried out by these institutions, he said. Fazal said that the city’s gully network was not capable of handling the heavy intake of storm water and several bridges in the city are also at a dilapidated condition.

The limited number of gullies and the lack of supervision on their cleaning caused the unexpected floods. Some complaints about the removal of gully caps have been made to the CMC by ratepayers and corrective measures have been taken by the CMC with police assistance.

He noted that The CMC cannot be solely responsible for the situation,” he said. “The main drain channels of the Colombo city should be cleared mechanically on a large scale with the assistance of the Land Reclamation and Development Corporation. No measures could be initiated by the CMC unless the main channels are drained,” he said.

Chairman of the Land Reclamation and Development Corporation Somaweera Chandrasiri told The Sunday Times FT that the main canal ways are to be dredged under a special programme to control flash floods in Colombo and suburban areas noting that it was the responsibility of the corporation to maintain canal ways and to take action against unauthorized land reclamation.

A senior official of the RDA said that they cannot bear the responsibility for delaying the repair work of roads maintained by the CMC. The Ceylon Electricity Board, Sri Lanka Telecom and the National Water Supply and Drainage Board are the other institutions which had to carry out digging of roads for laying of transmission lines under ground power cables, erecting polls or repairing or laying pipe lines.

However making the road after excavations is the sole responsibility of the Colombo Municipal Council in areas under its purview.