Relocating President’s House and PM’s official residence to Kotte? A fresh warning

A news report about a proposal to relocate the President’s House and the Prime Minister’s official residence to Sri Jayewardenepura, Kotte, gave me the shock of my life as the only surviving engineer associated with the problems related to Kelani Ganga floods from its inception in the 1960s to date.

However, it was not until the major flood of 1984 when I as the Deputy Director of Irrigation was exposed for the first time in the history of Kelani Ganga, that both Dutch built Kollonawa Bund of 1800 as well as the British Built “Howard Bund/ Gothatuwa Bunds” of 1924 are located in the wrong places, simultaneously pointing at the correct location closer to the river. See plan below.

This period was followed by several foreign consultants entering our country. To mention a few of them are Alkins, Ceysma, Subana and Megapolis, Often referred to as “White Elephants” Joined the fray, with many proposals the most hilarious of them being the proposal to shift President’s House to a 67 Ac blocks of land in Angoda while the adjoining 107 Ac block in Mulleriyawa for High Value Development both areas said to be free from Kelani floods, while the government was hell bent on the proposed to shift the Capital to Kotte and build a New Parliament also in Kotte.

Parliament flooded in June 1992

It was at this stage that the first flood warning appeared in the headlines of another popular paper dated 17.11.1981 while the inevitable happened in June 1992.

Now another Warning

Historically the mandate to deal with floods and other matters related to all 103 river basins of our country was given only to the Irrigation Department. However, at present many other organisations backed by certain foreign consultants are also dealing with floods and capable of obtaining massive loans of millions of dollars for the mere mention of the word “floods”. Such loans taken have created many high cost civil works of no visible benefit to be seen, while our future generations will have to repay these loans. They are as follows:

1) Huge underground tunnels some 8ft in diameter.

2) Huge pumping stations

3) Unwanted bridges

4) Huge gated structure on Heen Ela

5) A New canal draining to Kelani Ganga

6) Unsuccessful water transport Scheme

If this huge menace is not immediately stopped and those responsible brought to book and the subject of Kelani Ganga brought under the Irrigation Department, the proposed Presidents House and the Prime Minister’s official residence in Kotte will suffer the same fate as the Parliament, Kotte.

Sand-bagging done by the Army 2016

Eng. K.D.A.H. Nanayakkara

Senior DD Irrigation

(Retd)