Compensation cheques were presented on Thursday to 248 families affected by Cyclone Ditwah in the Badulla Divisional Secretariat Division, at a ceremony held at the Badulla District Secretariat.
The programme was organised under Minister of Plantation and Community Infrastructure Samantha Vidyaratne, Hiru News reported.
What was paid
Families who lost their homes entirely were paid at a rate of Rs. 5 million each. Two families received a combined Rs. 10 million towards purchasing a new house, and two others received initial instalments of Rs. 2 million each together with second instalments of Rs. 1.5 million each.
Twenty-four families received Rs. 200,000 each for repairs to partially damaged houses.
The largest group — 205 families who qualified for compensation of up to Rs. 500,000 on the basis of officer verification, without a formal assessment report — received initial instalments of Rs. 300,000 each. Cheques were also handed over for 13 houses entitled to compensation on the basis of assessment reports.
A note on the total
Hiru News is the only newsroom to have carried the story, and its figures for the overall total do not agree with one another. Its headline puts the day’s cheques at Rs. 835 million; the article’s own web address describes the same payments as Rs. 8.35 million.
Neither figure is consistent with the itemised payments the report lists. Those add up to roughly Rs. 83 million, or an average of about Rs. 336,000 per family — which matches the stated rates of Rs. 300,000 and Rs. 200,000 for the two largest groups. A total of Rs. 835 million would imply an average of Rs. 3.37 million per family, which the listed rates do not support.
LankaNewz has not repeated an aggregate figure for that reason. The per-family rates above are internally consistent across the report.
The district picture
Addressing the ceremony, Vidyaratne said relief was being delivered to all affected people as quickly as possible.
Of 5,515 partially damaged houses in the district, payments had been completed for more than 3,000 of the 3,779 families who opted to receive relief without an assessment, along with 507 families who sought compensation based on assessment reports, he said.
The minister also set out wider allocations for the district: rental subsidies totalling Rs. 225 million for 1,633 families who had been living in rented accommodation over the past six months, Rs. 212.4 million for 4,248 families for kitchen utensils, and Rs. 81.5 million for schoolchildren. He said more than 750 affected business owners had received Rs. 43.1 million, and that Rs. 2,013 million had gone to 5,540 paddy and vegetable farmers through the Department of Agrarian Development. A further allocation covers 589 fully damaged and high-risk houses.
Thursday’s disbursement is a considerably larger and later tranche than the first phase of housing assistance in Badulla, which reached 23 families at Rs. 500,000 each in April.
