Sri Lanka plans to deploy disaster relief teams drawn from its security forces to Nepal within the next few days, Deputy Minister of Defence Major General (Retd) Aruna Jayasekara said on Sunday.
The government has decided to send teams made up of security forces personnel to support relief operations in flood-hit areas, Jayasekara told reporters in Anuradhapura, in remarks reported by Ada Derana.
The Defence Ministry and the National Disaster Management Relief Centre are jointly assessing what Nepal actually needs and working out the composition of the teams, he said. Neither the number of personnel nor the type of teams has been settled. Arrangements are expected within the next few days.
Jayasekara said Sri Lanka was responding “sensitively” to Nepal’s situation as a fellow South Asian country.
The money has not moved yet
The Deputy Minister also said preparations “are underway” to provide the USD 1 million in financial assistance to Nepal on behalf of the government — a commitment President Anura Kumara Dissanayake directed three days earlier, on Thursday evening. His phrasing indicates the money has been approved but not yet transferred.
Whether Nepal will take the teams is unresolved
Ada Derana’s report does not say whether Kathmandu has agreed to receive Sri Lankan personnel, and that is not a formality.
Nepal initially refused all foreign search-and-rescue teams, saying its own agencies could manage, then reversed within a day under diplomatic pressure from governments whose nationals were among the missing. The clearance it granted was deliberately narrow: India, China, Australia and South Korea, admitted for two specific tasks — reaching workers trapped in hydropower tunnels, and DNA identification of the recovered dead, which Nepal’s laboratories cannot process at the volume required.
Sri Lanka was not among the four. Officials from at least two embassies in Kathmandu said their offers of expert teams went unanswered.
Sri Lanka is on the wider list of countries that formally asked Nepal to admit their search-and-rescue teams, alongside India, China, the United States, Britain, Japan, South Korea and Bangladesh, according to reporting by the Kathmandu Post. A South Korean rapid response team reached Kathmandu before that clearance was issued and waited there without being deployed.
Jayasekara’s statement therefore describes a decision Colombo has taken, not an arrangement Nepal has confirmed. The assessment he says is under way — of what Nepal requires — is the step that would determine whether the teams are admitted, and in what role.
Context
Sri Lanka’s own recovery from Cyclone Ditwah ten months ago relied heavily on foreign assistance, including an Indian credit line, an ADB reconstruction package and a Chinese grant for bridge rebuilding. Dissanayake cited that experience when he first offered help to Nepal.
The regional death toll from the August 26 glacial collapse now stands at 691, with more than 3,000 people missing.
No other verified newsroom had filed the Deputy Minister’s remarks at the time of writing.
