{"id":101667,"date":"2020-04-28T15:46:07","date_gmt":"2020-04-28T22:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=101667"},"modified":"2020-04-28T15:46:07","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T22:46:07","slug":"sri-lanka-needs-a-strategy-to-resettle-congested-slum-communities-to-control-the-future-spread-of-viruses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/04\/28\/sri-lanka-needs-a-strategy-to-resettle-congested-slum-communities-to-control-the-future-spread-of-viruses\/","title":{"rendered":"Sri Lanka needs a strategy to resettle congested slum communities to control the future spread of viruses"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Dr Sarath Obeysekera\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>Failures of government agencies including local short-sighted politicians also local authorities had led to uncontrolled human settlements in the form of Ghettos and slums and Watta\u201d within state-owned lands, road reservations, canal reservations, railway reservations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After 1977 since the change regime from a quasi socialistic government to a more open economy, the urban population started expanding and people started forcibly settling along in lands that are owned by state agencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Authorities kept quite when Colombo, some parts of Gampaha, some areas of Kalutara, and Beruwala started rapidly growing with closely built clusters of shanties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1975 onwards various high rise flats \u00a0were built, going away from the concept of various settlement such as Jayawardene Pura Rukmal Gama Mattegoda which are settled with families widely spread out to a certain extent\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was a canal resettlement program in Colombo in 1990\nwhere such slums were resettled &nbsp;in a somewhat wider area&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Examples are Havelock Road near \u00a0Lumbini school Narahenpita near RMV , Panchikawatte Kadirana in Colombo 15, etc .<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now we have a leadership which can emulate Singapore and take action to remove these encroached settlements, if necessary by force for this function, a task force is not sufficient but a Task Master with determination and endurance \u00a0Should be appointed\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>State agencies should have strict control on protecting \u00a0their lands from further \u00a0encroachment\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Physical distancing on the road or in shops and offices may\nnot be sufficient unless we have such plan to establish habitats with enough\nspace in between for the people to live in&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I hope the government will take this seriously once corona spread is controlled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dr Sarath Obeysekera <br>\nCEO Walkers Colombo Shipyard <br>\nColombo <br>\nSri Lanka<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr Sarath Obeysekera\u00a0 Failures of government agencies including local short-sighted politicians also local authorities had led to uncontrolled human settlements in the form of Ghettos and slums and Watta\u201d within state-owned lands, road reservations, canal reservations, railway reservations. After 1977 since the change regime from a quasi socialistic government to a more open economy, the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-sarath-obeysekera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}