The government is preparing relief for people who lose their jobs to the El Niño dry spell, after employment losses were taken up for the first time at the Cabinet subcommittee handling the crisis.
The issue “received special attention” at the subcommittee’s fourth meeting, held at the Presidential Secretariat and chaired by Environment Minister Dr. Dammika Patabendi, Ada Derana reported, citing a statement from the President’s Media Division. The committee discussed measures to assist people whose employment could be affected by the weather, “including possible relief for those who lose their jobs.”
Neither the statement nor the report set out what form that relief would take, which sectors are expected to shed workers, or how many jobs are thought to be at risk.
Vegetables, and the water that is left
The subcommittee also examined the effect on agriculture and food security, with attention on limiting damage to vegetable and fruit cultivation and heading off a vegetable shortage.
Six districts are currently classified as affected. The committee reviewed programmes intended to keep water flowing to households in those districts so residents can carry on with daily activities “with minimal disruption.”
The six were named in the Disaster Management Centre’s most recent count as Monaragala, Ampara, Badulla, Batticaloa, Polonnaruwa and Ratnapura — a list covering 88,068 people across 28 divisional secretariat divisions. Monaragala is worst affected. The PMD statement did not name the districts itself.
Next dates
A media briefing is set for September 4 to publicise the start of the Maha cultivation season. A Zoom discussion will also be held with district secretaries and the chairpersons of district coordinating committees in the six affected districts to assess conditions and coordinate further action.
The subcommittee meets again on September 14.
Who attended
Housing, Construction and Water Supply Minister Susil Ranasinghe and Plantation and Community Infrastructure Minister Samantha Vidyaratne attended, along with the subcommittee’s secretary and convener, Chief of Presidential Staff Prabath Chandrakeerthi.
Also present were Director General of Meteorology A.L.K. Wijemanne and Disaster Management Centre Director General Major General Sampath Kotuwegoda (Retd), with officials from the Environment, Agriculture, Trade, and Plantation and Community Infrastructure ministries.
Context
This is the same body that met for the third time on August 17, also under Patabendi at the Presidential Secretariat. In the fortnight since, conditions have tightened: Cabinet approved Rs. 3 billion in compensation for roughly 8,000 acres of ruined crops, Polonnaruwa shut off the last of its irrigation releases, and villages in Trincomalee began rationing the water left in drying tanks.
The timing of the Maha briefing matters. Maha is the main cultivation season, and the FAO has warned that El Niño raises the risk of disruption to it. A significant loss of Maha production would feed directly into rice prices and import requirements.
Not yet reported
The statement gives no figures — not for jobs at risk, not for the cost of any relief scheme, and not for the vegetable supply position it says the government wants to protect. It does not say whether the relief would be new money or drawn from existing social protection programmes, or which ministry would administer it. No other verified newsroom had carried the meeting at the time of writing; the story rests on the PMD statement as relayed by Ada Derana.
