Construction has started on 5,799 houses to replace homes completely destroyed by Cyclone Ditwah, the Ministry of Defence said on Wednesday, according to NewsFirst.
Ministry Media Spokesman and Senior Assistant Secretary Prageeth Danansuriya said the selection of land for the new houses is also nearing completion — indicating that construction and site allocation are running in parallel rather than in sequence.
Separately, work has begun on more than 57,000 houses that were partially damaged by the cyclone.
What the figures mean
The two categories are handled under different arrangements. Families whose homes were fully destroyed qualify for the Rs. 5 million-per-house assistance the Rebuilding Sri Lanka Task Force has been administering; partially damaged properties draw smaller repair payments, which the task force said in June were nearing completion.
That the fully-destroyed caseload is only now reaching the construction stage reflects how long the process has taken. The task force flagged difficulties with the Rs. 5 million payments in Matale, Puttalam, Kegalle, Badulla and Ratnapura in June, and recruited 125 technical officers to clear a shortage that had slowed land inspections and reporting.
Cyclone Ditwah struck in November 2025, killing 646 people, affecting 2.2 million residents and causing an estimated US$4.1 billion in damage.
Not reported
NewsFirst does not break the 5,799 houses down by district, name a contractor or implementing agency, give a completion timeline, or say how the figure was arrived at. It does not say how many of the 5,799 have land allocated and how many are still waiting, nor what proportion of the total destroyed-home caseload the figure represents.
It gives no cost for the programme, does not say whether the houses are being built on original sites or at relocation sites, and does not address the five districts previously identified as problem cases. It does not say how far advanced the 57,000 partial repairs are, or when either programme is due to finish.
Published counts of homes destroyed by Ditwah have varied between roughly 5,300 and 6,000 depending on the reporting date and agency, and the Defence Ministry does not explain how 5,799 relates to those earlier figures.
No other verified newsroom had filed on the announcement at the time of writing. Ada Derana was unreachable behind a CloudFront block, and neither the Daily Mirror nor Hiru News carried the story on their listings.
