Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya on Tuesday instructed officials to submit a comprehensive report within one week on the condition of every school affected by Cyclone Ditwah, stressing that accurate data is essential to support recovery and ensure uninterrupted education.
The directive was issued during a special parliamentary discussion on plantation-sector schools, where attention focused on the impact of the cyclone in the Central, Sabaragamuwa and Uva Provinces. The meeting reviewed damage to plantation-sector schools, ongoing restoration work, land-ownership issues, teacher shortages, school-development projects and the relocation of schools that had been fully or partially damaged.
Education Minister Samantha Vidyarathna told the meeting the government had already started restoring affected schools. The discussion exposed shortcomings in coordination between the line ministry and provincial authorities in gathering accurate data on the damage, and the PM said reliable information was essential to ensure interventions actually reached the children affected.
“Merely assigning children from affected schools to other schools does not resolve the issue. We need to determine whether those children are actually attending school, whether they are receiving an education, and what difficulties they are experiencing,” the Prime Minister said.
Amarasuriya warned that some students reassigned to alternative schools had not reported for classes and called for urgent follow-up. “We must urgently find out what has happened to those children. Immediate attention should also be given to the establishment of temporary schools,” she added.
She instructed the Education Ministry to work with the officer responsible for plantation-sector schools and to coordinate closely with Provincial Directors of Education and Provincial Council officials. She also called on MPs to actively support the process.
The PM said the government would address teacher shortages in Tamil-medium schools by separately recruiting and training Tamil-speaking teachers, and that 50% of existing teacher vacancies in provincial schools would be filled in the current recruitment round. New teachers will be required to serve in their assigned schools for five years.
The school-damage discussion runs in parallel with Tuesday’s separate parliamentary debate on cyclone-hit fisheries loans, where the PM ordered Treasury and Bank of Ceylon officials to bring loan-relief proposals back to her within ten days. Both follow the formal closure of the cyclone Humanitarian Programme via the UN Resident Coordinator on May 30 and the IOM cash-grant programme that reached 4,000 families across seven districts.
