Saturday 25th May, 2024

Torrential rains and gale-force winds have caused a large number of treefalls in different parts of the country. Falling trees have already snuffed out five lives and caused extensive damage to properties, especially vehicles and houses, during the past few days. The situation is expected to take a turn for the worse with rains intensifying.

Perhaps, the city of Colombo is more prone to treefalls than any other urban centre in the country; the green giants adorning its streets and public spaces are said to number more than one hundred thousand. Many of them are ageing and believed to be unstable. Some of them have recently collapsed. These leafy titans have to be monitored regularly to ensure that they do not pose a danger to the public.

It may be recalled that in October 2023, a large tree fell across a street in Colombo, crushing a bus and killing five passengers. It had been leaning for weeks, posing a serious safety threat, but the Colombo Municipal Council (CMC), true to form, ignored warnings and sprang into action after disaster had struck. Having risen from its slumber, the CMC panjandrums promised to take action to ensure that such tragedies would not happen again in the city. But nothing tangible has been done so far to ensure the safety of the public against treefalls, which are likely to kill some more people if rains and strong winds continue.

An expensive machine purchased by the CMC in 2017 to make tree risk assessments in the city has been idling in a storeroom, according to media reports. Municipal Commissioner Bhadranie Jayawardhana has been quoted by the media as saying that there is no one with required technical competence to operate the machine. Shouldn’t the CMC have had some of its technicians trained for the task before purchasing it. What the city administrators have done is like buying an elephant without a mahout! A company never sells such a highly specialised machine without training someone to operate it. Perhaps, those who procured it were interested in kickbacks and not in having it put to the intended use.

One may recall that some years ago, the health sector trade unions revealed that a group of high-ranking health administrators, after purchasing some equipment, had undergone overseas training meant for technicians. Has something similar happened at the CMC, where the tree risk assessment machine is concerned? The Municipal Commissioner should conduct an investigation to find out why the machine was bought without anyone competent to handle it or whether anyone who is not a member of the CMC technical staff has undergone training to operate it. Anything is possible in the CMC, which has become synonymous with corruption.

The Colombo Municipal Commissioner has also said that the aforesaid machine was once tested by a university don and its readings were found to be inaccurate. If so, the issue must be taken up with the manufacturer of the machine forthwith, and action taken to rectify the defect. Most of all, the CMC ought to have some of its technicians trained to operate the machine so that safety threats posed by the leafy giants could be identified and preventive action taken. It is hoped that the persons responsible for the procurement of the idling machine be traced and an explanation sought.