Former Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka said on Monday that a carefully planned system to prevent flooding in Colombo was put in place during his tenure as Minister of Megapolis, and that the recent floods were caused solely by the Colombo Municipal Council failing to clean the city’s drains and culverts.
Pumping stations at Ambatale, Kolonnawa and Peliyagoda were set up while he held the portfolio, Ranawaka said, according to the Daily Mirror.
Two underground tunnels were also constructed, he said. “One tunnel was constructed from Noris Canal Road to Colombo North and the other from Independence Square to the canal near D.S. Senanayake College.”
The issue that led to the recent floods in Colombo, he added, was solely the Colombo Municipal Council not carrying out its duty of cleaning the drains and culverts.
Where this sits in the argument
The statement is the latest entry in a widening dispute over responsibility for the flash floods that hit the capital on Friday 6 November, and it is the first to come from a former minister asserting that the physical infrastructure was already in place.
It arrives alongside two other accounts that assign responsibility differently. EconomyNext reported on Monday that Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya had instructed officials on 13 October to clear the capital’s canals and drains within two weeks, and that the deadline passed unmet 24 days before the floods. Opposition MP S.M. Marikkar has called for Colombo Mayor Vraie Cally Balthazaar to resign or be removed.
The Council itself has pointed outwards. The CMC said on Monday it would take legal action over unauthorised buildings obstructing drainage, having already removed structures at Mattakkuliya and Bimelwatte Road, and state agencies identified 60 obstructed points across five Colombo electoral divisions in a joint clearing operation on Sunday.
What the technical record says
Ranawaka’s claim that the cause was “solely” a cleaning failure is a political assertion, and the technical accounts on the record are not that narrow.
The Mayor has said Colombo’s drainage was designed for roughly 30mm of rain, while Met Department Director General Ajith Wijemanne described more than 100mm falling in under an hour on Friday evening and separately named blocked or obstructed drainage as a contributing factor rather than the only one. Rainfall totals attributed to the event — about 123mm, 129mm and 146.6mm — come from different stations and measurement windows and are not corrections of one another.
Ranawaka served as Minister of Megapolis and Western Development in the government of 2015 to 2019.
Not reported
The Daily Mirror account does not say where or in what setting Ranawaka made the remarks, and carries no response from the Colombo Municipal Council, the Mayor or the government. It does not state whether the pumping stations and tunnels he describes were operating during Friday’s rainfall, what capacity they were designed for, or whether any assessment has been made of how they performed. No independent verification of the claim that drain cleaning was the sole cause is offered, and no inquiry into the question has been announced.
