The loss of lives of fishermen is a reflection of collapse of the system
weather condition on Saturday early morning, in the rough sea have destroyed
more than 60 beloved fishermen’s lives around the West, South/West and Southern
coasts in Sri Lanka. Some of the media messages say there are 31 including
30 fisher people dead, 29 injured and 31 missing people, including 37 boats
that disappeared.
These are alarming messages we are receiving since last Saturday. The whole
fishing community is shocked to see all these irreparable damage to their lives
and negligence of the authorities concerned. The families are cursing the
authorities who should have been responsible to timely report to and inform the
people to be affected by the recent damaging weather conditions.
Ministry of Disaster Management with a system of disaster mitigation, signal
towers that have been established along the coast, the Department of
Meteorology to forecast weather, and the Ministry of Fisheries to announce
weather conditions on regular basis.
We have a big question then. Do these authorities accept and take the
responsibility for the lives of the people we have lost due to the
irresponsible reporting of weather?
Our authorities and some ministers talk proudly that we are now very close to
being declared the greatest wonders of Asia. Yet,
simple weather forecasting is not being done on time and unable to save
the lives of those people. Most of the fishermen whom we met told us there was
no any adverse weather forecast by the concerned authorities at all.
The Government cannot compensate the life of those people by simply giving
compensations for the funerals of those fishermen.
We cannot agree to the way the responsible authorities behaved in this national
calamity.
Now the Minister of Disaster Management says that he wants to submit a cabinet
paper to renovate the met department. This has not been a priority in our
national disaster mitigation plans prepared so far and now only they think how
to renovate the outdated met department for people’s safety.
At the same time, some media reported that Minister of disaster management is
ready to take actions against the officials who are responsible for not
reporting.
This is not only an irresponsibility of the government officials. The whole
government should take the responsibility and be accountable.
Even after such a national calamity, the affected fisher people had to come to
the streets and to awake the authorities, blocking the railway tracks and
causing agitations to get the assistance to properly and justly manage this
disaster, rescue people in danger and prevent any more similar tragedies. This
itself is a clear message how un-concerrned the authorities have been about the
lives of the fisher people.
We urge from the government as follows;
1. to have an independent study of what happened to the responsible authorities
on that day and recommendations to follow strictly in the future,
2. to compensate not only to the funerals and the final respects of the people,
but to the affected vulnerable families, children’s in the families for their
education and other matters adequately,
3. to ensure an effective disaster risk information scheme with the
responsibility of national interest,
4. to reactivate the established disaster information towers along the coast
for an effective services,
5. to develop a workable plan with proper consultation with fisher groups.
purchase life jackets to the fishermen,
tsunami rehabilitation programs to make an effective disaster mitigation
program with wider participation of the society,
Convener-National Fisheries Solidarity Movement.[NAFSO]
