Forty percent of housing complexes in Colombo are more than 40 years old, according to the Ministry of Housing, Construction and Water Supply, NewsFirst reported.
Deputy Minister T.B. Sarath said there are 96 apartment complexes managed by the Housing Development Authority within Colombo city limits.
On those figures, roughly 38 of the 96 complexes predate 1986.
What the ministry says it is doing
Sarath said a programme is under way to renovate the complexes that are in poor condition. He added that consideration is also being given to replacing some existing complexes with new buildings altogether.
The gap between the statement and a plan
No budget, timetable, or list of buildings was given for either the renovation programme or the proposed replacements. The Deputy Minister did not say how many of the 96 complexes have been assessed, how many were found structurally unsound, how many households they house, or where residents would live during any rebuild.
Nor is it stated whether the 40% figure refers only to the Authority-managed stock or to Colombo’s apartment housing more broadly.
Context
Buildings of this vintage are the walk-up flats put up under successive state housing schemes, many of them to rehouse families cleared from low-income settlements. Age in this stock typically shows up first in plumbing, drainage and electrical systems rather than in structure, and deferred maintenance on shared services is a recurring complaint in the older complexes.
The National Housing Development Authority has been under scrutiny on other fronts this year: its General Manager was sent on compulsory leave in August, and Parliament has separately examined a housing scheme run between 2015 and 2019. No other verified newsroom had carried the Deputy Minister’s remarks at the time of writing.
