Hot News from Sri Lanka

Not one drop of water must flow into the ocean without serving the purposes of man”
King Parakrambahu the great (1164-1196 AD), the builder of rainwater reservoir Sea of Parakrama”

The vision of the King Parakrambahu the great is now overridden by the bandyism of  Sirisena family in Polonaruwa  to save their hotel illegally constructed on the bank of Parakram Samudraya from submerging.

According to irrigation department Parakrama Samudraya is a shallow reservoir with an average depth of 5m and a surface area of 26,500,000 m2 supporting to  irrigate over 18000 acres of paddy land, By lowering the normal level by 0.5 m  7500 acres of paddy land will be deprived of their vital water supply.

The report says After the hotel expansion work in 2009, the sluice gates were secretly opened every night on the instruction of the area Irrigation Engineer escorted by the police. The fishermen who went fishing in the middle of the night in Parakrama Samudraya have seen this and when they exposed it farmer organisations protested against this unscrupulous act. By this time heavy rain fell causing floods in Polonnaruwa during 2010- 2011 that made some unknown party to break the sluice gates,” farmer organisation sources claimed on condition of anonymity.

The sources further claimed that the tank that can retain 110,000 acre feet of water now holds only 80,000 due to lowering the water levels. According to the sources, around 7,500 acres of paddy lands could have been cultivated with the 30,000 acre feet deficit of water. They also said how the hotel sewerage pipes are diverted to the tank underneath.

This has deprived the downstream farmers of enough water for their paddy cultivation. This was clearly evident by the way the Irrigation Department did not allow the farmers to cultivate paddy in all their paddy lands during the recent drought but half or one third of their lands due to lack of water. As a result the country faced a severe rice shortage during the past few months and had to import rice from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Even the sewerage tanks were overflowing very often due to high water levels,” sources claimed.