A review meeting on the impact of current weather conditions is to be held on August 17, Minister of Water Supply Susil Ranasinghe has said.
The meeting has been convened by the Cabinet Sub-Committee formed to mitigate the impact of El Niño conditions, with all relevant stakeholders taking part, the minister told NewsFirst.
Conditions expected to persist to April
The Department of Meteorology forecasts that the effects of the El Niño condition will continue until next April. Director General Ajith Wijeweera said dry weather conditions will prevail in early September.
That timeline extends the disruption well beyond the current Yala season and into the Maha cultivation cycle, which depends on the northeast monsoon.
Mounting strain on water supply
The review comes with the dry spell already registering across several indicators. More than 68,000 people in four districts have been affected by drinking water shortages, and national reservoir storage has fallen to 37% of capacity, with Ampara and Batticaloa among the worst hit.
Parliament’s Caucus on Climate separately urged the government to build anticipatory crisis governance mechanisms rather than manage climate shocks reactively, hearing an interim report from the Independent Expert Advisory Group on El Niño Resilience that proposed a Strategic Climate Resilience Framework.
Short-term relief is forecast for parts of the island, with the Met Department expecting showers in Sabaragamuwa and four districts today, though such spells do little to reverse a multi-month storage deficit.
