{"id":153571,"date":"2025-12-09T15:11:53","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=153571"},"modified":"2025-12-09T15:11:53","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T22:11:53","slug":"undp-enumerates-ditwahs-dark-achievement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2025\/12\/09\/undp-enumerates-ditwahs-dark-achievement\/","title":{"rendered":"UNDP enumerates Ditwah&#8217;s dark achievement"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Courtesy Hiru News<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<p>The United Nations Development Programme termed Cyclone Ditwah one of the worst flooding disasters in decades after new geospatial analysis revealed floodwaters submerged 20% of Sri Lanka&#8217;s landmass, more than 1.1 million hectares.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The report confirms that 2.3 million people reside in the inundated zones, with women accounting for more than half of the exposed population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Data indicates that 60% of those exposed live in the densely populated Colombo and Gampaha districts, placing immense pressure on essential services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The situation remains critical because over half the affected households already faced instability, high debt, and poverty before the storm struck on November 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>UNDP Resident Representative Azusa Kubota warned that Sri Lanka cannot shoulder more debt to cover reconstruction costs following its recent economic crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>She urged international partners to provide affordable financing to prevent the nation from falling off a &#8220;debt cliff&#8221; while trying to rebuild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The physical toll includes nearly 720,000 buildings\u2014one in every twelve across the island\u2014now sitting in flood zones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Infrastructure damage remains extensive, with 16,000 kilometres of roads and nearly 500 bridges affected, while the central highlands suffered around 1,200 landslides, which isolated remote communities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Concerns for food security are mounting after waters covered 530,000 hectares of rice paddy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Devanand Ramiah from the UNDP Crisis Bureau noted how fast these compounding crises unfold, emphasising that recovery will prove slow and costly where high flooding overlaps with existing economic fragility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The UN and national authorities are calling for scaled-up early recovery support to restore transport links and assist the most vulnerable demographics, including the elderly and children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Courtesy Hiru News The United Nations Development Programme termed Cyclone Ditwah one of the worst flooding disasters in decades after new geospatial analysis revealed floodwaters submerged 20% of Sri Lanka&#8217;s landmass, more than 1.1 million hectares. The report confirms that 2.3 million people reside in the inundated zones, with women accounting for more than half [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153571","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=153571"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153572,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153571\/revisions\/153572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}