The Women and Child Affairs Ministry has taken action to issue birth certificates and other vital documents to children in probation centres and those affected by Cyclone Ditwah.

Speaking to The Daily Morning, the Ministry Media Secretary Thilini Gunawardane said that mobile services will soon be deployed to reach children who lost their documents, including identification cards, in the cyclone. "We've advised the Registrar General to start producing documents, including birth certificates, for these children immediately," she said.

With the United Nations Children’s Fund estimating that 527,000 children were affected by Ditwah, the Ministry believes that many of them must have lost crucial documents. The Ministry is pushing to get documents to children in probation centres, despite not having exact numbers of the latter, as they are needed for education and other purposes.