An end to the flooding menace

RAIN is an inconvenience. It increases traffic and causes hardship for everyone regardless of their economic status. A deluge, such as the one being experienced at the moment, also shows the administration where their policies are not working and that was certainly the case around Colombo during the last few days.

Horton Place, Thunmulla and Public Library roundabout are only three places out of many where flooding resulted in huge snarls of traffic. However, they are of importance because they are in central locations in what is commonly referred to as influential or rich parts of Colombo. If roads in these areas cannot be made flood-safe, then there is a harder challenge than previously thought on the hands of the Government and municipal authorities.

Interestingly, the rain comes at the time when Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Defence and Urban Development is planning to launch a mega project today to transform the country’s commercial capital Colombo into a ‘Garden city of the East’.

Slogans aside the Metro Colombo Urban Development Project (MCUDP), financed by a concessionary loan to the amount of US$ 213 million by the World Bank, aims to reduce flood risks, improve urban infrastructure and services and develop the road network and environment in Colombo and suburbs.

The five-year project consists of two components – flood and drainage management and institutional strengthening for sustainable metropolitan and local infrastructure and service provision and implementation support.

The first component will focus on improvements to main canals and lakes, improvements to secondary canals, improvements and rehabilitation to storm water drainage, road improvements and other social and physical infrastructure. The second component aims to strengthen institutional capacity at metropolitan and local level and support project implementation.

The project aims to reduce flooding in the catchment of the Colombo Water Basin, and support local authorities in the Colombo Metropolitan Area to rehabilitate, improve and manage local infrastructures and services. The flood mitigation measures under this project are estimated to benefit some 220,000 people across the metro Colombo area. Colombo Viharamahadevi Park will also be renovated and beautified under this project.

The project will be implemented by Colombo, Dehiwala-Mount Lavinia and Sri Jayewardenepura Kotte Municipal Councils and the Kolonnawa Urban Council. In addition, Cabinet last week passed Rs. 1 billion for flood mitigation projects in the same area, which will also come under the Defence Ministry. With such colossal resources, it can only be hoped that the familiar floods that engulf Colombo will become a memory.

However, as short-term measures, the Government should also focus on repairing roads that are in urgent need of it as a means of providing the public with some much-needed relief. Given the millions that are spent on development projects, it would be prudent to prioritise so that simple solutions can be found for longstanding headaches.

Given the massive amount of money being spent on city beautification, another prudent measure would be public engagement through transparent policies. Despite the focus on urban development, the good governance factor has been seriously missing in Government action, leading to oversights such as a party in Thunmulla seeking court action over agriculture land being taken over by the Government for flood retention and then being filled illegally.