Monday 15th June, 2026

Sri Lanka apparently has more than its fair share of extreme weather events, ranging from floods to droughts and now the disruptive effects of a mega climate anomaly. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has warned that due to unusually warm ocean waters in the tropical Pacific, El Niño conditions are developing fast, and they are expected to drive more extreme temperature and rainfall patterns in the coming months. Sri Lanka is among the countries that are expected to suffer the severest impact of this phenomenon.

Some climate experts have suggested that Sri Lanka may not experience a severe El Niño impact. However, it is prudent to prepare for the worst-case scenario.

The WMO has stressed that the time for informed decision-making, planning and preparedness is now. “The science is clear: El Niño is arriving on our doorstep in the coming months with 90% certainty. The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said. The world has experienced El Niño events for many years and therefore knows what it is like to face them. However, the question is whether such warnings will jolt Sri Lanka into taking urgent action to mitigate the impact of El Niño, which will deal a double whammy, with floods and droughts affecting different parts of the country simultaneously.

Sri Lanka has earned notoriety for ignoring and failing to respond to crises and disasters swiftly. One may recall that in December 2004, nobody sensed danger on seeing the eerie drawback of the sea minutes before the landfall of the Boxing Day tsunami. Thousands of lives were lost as a result. There were quite a few warnings of the impending Easter Sunday terror attacks in 2019, but nobody cared to take preventive action. Many experts warned of a crippling economic crisis in 2022, but no action was taken to prevent it. So, fear being expressed in some quarters that nothing serious is likely to be done by way of disaster risk reduction in view of El Niño is not unfounded. Last year, Cyclone Ditwah caught the incumbent government unprepared and overwhelmed the state disaster response system initially. The impact of El Niño is expected to be far severer as it will last for months.

The first casualty of El Niño is agriculture dependent on monsoon rainfall. Most countries affected by El Niño-driven droughts and floods face crop losses in multiple seasons and the resultant prolonged food shortages have the potential to lead to political upheavals. A possible increase in food imports is bound to worsen Sri Lanka’s foreign currency woes. Perhaps, many countries will be compelled to restrict agricultural exports. There’s the rub. Hence, agricultural experts have called for a climate-smart home gardening initiative to meet such an eventuality.

The impact of El Niño usually spreads to other sectors, such as power and energy. The use of substandard coal has caused a sharp decline in power generation at Norochcholai. If reservoir levels recede steeply, decreasing the country’s hydro power capacity drastically, it will not be possible to meet the Norochcholai generation shortfall by burning diesel, etc., due to the cost factor and forex constraints. Shortages of power, energy and water take their toll on the industrial sector and impede economic growth. Beyond economic losses, El Niño entails broader social costs such as poverty, disease outbreaks and disruptions to education.

The JVP-NPP government would have the public believe that it has a well-thought-out plan to mitigate the severe impact of El Niño by focusing on water conservation, climate-resilient agriculture, food and energy security while strengthening disaster preparedness. The Food Policy and Security Committee, appointed by the government, has reportedly discussed ways and means of mitigating the impact of El Niño with particular focus on agriculture, water storage and drinking water supplies. The proof of the pudding is said to be in the eating. One can only hope that the government will succeed in this endeavour and all other stakeholders will put their shoulders to the wheel.

Public Security Minister Ananda Wijepala has informed Parliament of some root causes of the country’s foreign exchange woes. He told the House the other day that a mega fraud involving the transfer of millions of dollars overseas under the guise of payments for non-existent imports, had been uncovered by the police and the Customs. However, the racket of phantom imports is a common mechanism that facilitates capital flight and illicit financial outflows. It is not of recent origin.

Minister Wijepala informed Parliament that investigations by the Central Crime Investigation Bureau , the Financial Crimes Investigation Division and Sri Lanka Customs had revealed that large-scale foreign exchange transfers were being routed abroad for goods that were never imported, and they contributed to significant dollar outflows from the country.

Minister Wijepala told the House that the loopholes exploited for illicit capital flight had been created through the Foreign Exchange Act No. 12 of 2017 (FEA-2017) during the UNP-led Yahapalana government, which did away with some crucial provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, No. 5 of 2006, according to which foreign exchange offences were predicate offences for money laundering. One may recall that the JVP backed the UNP-led Yahapalana government, which repealed the Exchange Control Act, No 24 of 1953 (ECA-1953) for the sake of crooks among its cronies. The JVP was even represented on the National Executive Council of that UNP-led administration.

The ECA-1953 was the primary legislative framework governing foreign currency, gold, securities, and cross-border financial transactions in Sri Lanka. In 2017, the Yahapalana government replaced the ECA-1953 with the FEA-2017 on the pretext of liberalising the foreign exchange flow. As per the ECA-1953, violations of its provisions were non-bailable criminal offences and they led to the confiscation of offenders’ property. By the time of its repeal, there were 30 court cases against offenders who included cronies of the UNP and the SLPP. The Frontline Socialist Party has rightly pointed out that when a new Act is introduced, repealing the old one, mention is made of the procedure to be adopted for the cases pending before court over previous offence. The FEA–2017 converted criminal offences under the previous Act into civil offences, which were relegated to the jurisdiction of the Magistrates’ Courts from the High Courts, and allowed bail to be granted by Magistrates. The confiscation of property, which was previously mandatory, was left to the judges’ discretion. The cases filed under the ECA-1953 came to an end. The new Act required frsh cases to be filed within a period of three months, but no such action was taken, and the offenders got off scot-free for all intents and purposes.

The FEA-2017 made an already bad situation worse. It has stood foreign exchange racketeers including errant exporters in good stead, and contributed to the present foreign currency crisis. Now that it has been revealed that errant exporters are parking proceeds from exports overseas and resorting to phantom imports, there is a pressing need for the ECA-1953 to be restored urgently to deal with such racketeers and shore up the country’s forex reserves.

The ongoing desperate measures to stabilise the rupee and tackle the forex issues must be complemented with drastic measures, such as a crackdown on hawala and undiyal networks. Successive governments have baulked at doing so, for their members themselves use these informal channels to stash away their ill-gotten funds in offshore accounts. Unless the illegal outflow of forex is blocked, with errant exporters being made to repatriate export proceeds, it will be well-nigh impossible to overcome the forex problems.

Most of all, there is a pressing need for a new law with provision for foreign exchange racketeers who got away with their crimes following the introduction of the FEA-2017 to be brought to justice. Their illegal operations have stood in the way of the country’s effort to tackle a worsening currency crisis.

Having talked the talk, the JVP-NPP government must walk the walk. It must fish or cut bait. After all, the JVP-led NPP came to power, promising to bring all racketeers to justice.

Saturday 13th June, 2026

Prime Minister and Education Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya has informed Parliament that as many as 267,138 students dropped out of school between 2018 and 2024. She said so in answer to a question from Opposition MP Hesha Withanage. Pointing out that figures for the period from 2018 to 2024 had been derived from annual school census reports, using an internationally recognised methodology that takes into account student enrolment figures and dropout rates from Grade One to Grade Ten, the PM added that definitive data on school dropout were not available for the period between 2010 and 2017. This is something serious. The education authorities must have such data. Otherwise, how can they formulate policies aimed at improving student participation in school education?

The Prime Minister told Parliament that the school dropout statistics were subject to the caveat that not all students who had left schools could be considered dropouts; some of them may have moved to schools in other areas, enrolled in international schools, or migrated overseas with their families while continuing their studies.

Such cases could not be separately identified under the methodology used to compile the statistics and were, therefore, included in the overall dropout figures. This points to the need for a holistic statistical analysis of the issue of students leaving school, and steps must be taken to ensure that all relevant factors are taken into account when statistics are prepared. The education authorities should be able to say how many children actually discontinued their education.

Thankfully, UNESCO has pointed out that Sri Lanka continues to perform better than most South Asian countries in keeping children in school though thousands still leave the education system annually. Using available data for 2024, some researchers have argued that Sri Lanka’s school dropout rate is about 0.7 per cent of the government-school student population. Regional comparisons show Nepal and Sri Lanka among the stronger performers on school retention, while Bangladesh has made substantial progress and Pakistan continues to struggle with high dropout rates. India, too, has worked hard to bring down the national school dropout rate. However, the bar must be set higher, and action should be taken to prevent school dropouts completely. It is hoped that the Prime Minister, as an academic and researcher, will address this issue, and ensure that the education authorities will fulfil the need for high-quality, policy-relevant statistics.

Prime Minister Dr. Amarasuriya has said a range of factors have contributed to students leaving the formal education system. According to media reports quoting her answer in Parliament, they include personal circumstances, school-related issues, family and economic difficulties, social influence, as well as students opting for alternative educational pathways and training opportunities. Researchers inform us that mong the main causes of school dropout in Sri Lanka are poverty, poor academic achievement, lack of perceived relevance of education, family difficulties, child labour, even early marriage or pregnancy in some cases, and inequalities in educational opportunities. From a policy perspective, as researchers have pointed out, addressing these issues requires not only financial support for vulnerable families but also improvements in school quality, vocational pathways, counselling services and community support systems.

The need for a multi-pronged strategy to address the root causes of the school dropout issue cannot be overemphasised. This should figure high on the incumbent government’s agenda.