In several parts of Sri Lanka’s hill country today, classrooms have stopped being places of learning and have become places of refuge. Desks are pushed aside, blackboards ignored, and families sleep on classroom floors while children wait at home for schools to reopen. This is not merely the aftermath of a natural disaster. It is the visible outcome of a deeper governance failure: the inability, or unwillingness, to move people permanently out of known danger even when the law, the data, and the warnings are clear.
The recent decision to extend the state of public emergency, effective from 28 December of last year (2025), following cyclone Ditwah, sharpens this question. The emergency was justified on grounds of public safety, the continuity of essential services, and national stability. Under the Public Security Ordinance, emergency regulations grant the State extraordinary powers, including the ability to requisition property and issue binding directions. When such powers are claimed, the responsibility to use them to protect life becomes unavoidable.
The scale of the Ditwah disaster is national. According to the Disaster Management Centre, 643 lives were lost and 183 persons remain missing across the island. Homes, roads, and livelihoods were destroyed. Yet, within this national tragedy, the impact has not been evenly shared. Plantation communities in the hill country have suffered a disproportionately high human cost, reflecting long-standing structural vulnerabilities rather than chance.
Official data confirm that 1,526 plantation-sector families, comprising 4,113 individuals, have been directly affected. Although plantation communities represent less than one per cent of the total affected population, they account for 73 recorded deaths and 52 missing persons. Districts such as Kandy, Badulla, Nuwara Eliya, Ratnapura, and Kegalle have been particularly affected, with Kandy emerging as a critical hotspot, including multiple fatalities within individual estates. These figures are not anomalies. They are the predictable outcome of fragile housing, insecure land tenure, and repeated exposure to landslide-prone terrain.
For decades, disasters in the hill country have followed a familiar pattern: landslides strike, families are displaced, temporary relief is provided, and people are quietly sent back to the same dangerous locations. Ditwah exposed the human cost of this cycle. Today, many displaced families remain housed in schools and community centres, caught between the urgent need to reopen schools and the equally urgent reality that returning to identified disaster-prone land places lives at risk.
This dilemma is not new, nor is it unavoidable. Sri Lanka is a Party to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, which commits states to move beyond reactive relief and towards prevention. The framework emphasises acting on early warnings, integrating disaster risk into land-use planning, and prioritising the protection of vulnerable communities. Many of the areas affected by Ditwah were long identified as high-risk zones. When hazards are known and mapped, the failure to prevent repeated exposure is not an act of nature; it is a failure of precautionary governance.
The current emergency extension brings this responsibility into sharper focus. Emergency powers are often defended as necessary to maintain order and ensure the flow of essential goods. Yet, public safety is not limited to policing or supply chains. It includes the duty to prevent foreseeable harm. If emergency regulations are justified in the name of protecting the nation, they must also be used to protect those most exposed to danger.
Crucially, there is no legal barrier to immediate action. Under the said Ordinance, emergency regulation eight authorises the State to take possession of premises for emergency purposes, including disaster relief and relocation. This power enables temporary possession and relocation to ensure safety. It does not require the transfer of ownership. Permanent solutions can follow through established legal mechanisms such as the Land Acquisition Act or the allocation of alternative State land.
Equally important is the legal status of plantation land. Much of this land remain State land, with plantation companies holding leasehold rights under the Crown Lands Ordinance. These companies are lessees, not owners. Decisions affecting life and safety cannot be deferred to commercial leaseholders when the State retains the ultimate authority and responsibility. The law provides a clear process: Emergency relocation to protect lives now, followed by orderly legal steps to secure permanent resettlement.
Yet, despite this legal clarity, displaced families are still being asked to return to unsafe areas. This exposes a troubling gap between the legal capacity and administrative will. It also raises a fundamental question: if emergency powers cannot be used to prevent people from being sent back into known danger, what purpose do they truly serve?
Beyond law and immediate relief lies a deeper challenge: how recovery itself is conceived. Disasters do not strike on equal ground. Communities that were already marginalised suffer the most and recover the slowest. Rebuilding vulnerability under the guise of reconstruction only guarantees future displacement. What is needed is a restorative economic approach to post-disaster recovery.
A restorative economic model recognises that recovery must correct pre-existing structural harm rather than reproduce it. In the plantation sector, this means that resettlement cannot be limited to relocating houses alone. It must integrate safe land, dignified housing, and access to livelihoods, education continuity, and basic services. It must ensure that families are moved not merely out of danger, but into conditions that allow stability and economic participation.
The plantation sector offers a clear and immediate test case for such an approach. The risk is known. The displacement is visible. The legal authority exists. If a restorative recovery model cannot be applied here, where the need is undeniable and the framework is already present, it raises serious doubts about the State’s ability to pursue equitable recovery elsewhere. This is not a demand for special treatment, but for corrective action in a sector that has historically absorbed the costs of national development while remaining excluded from its protections.
Political leadership has a role in ensuring this shift. The Tamil Progressive Alliance (TPA) has, over the years, consistently pursued structural reforms in the plantation sector, advocating for land rights, housing dignity, and administrative inclusion. These efforts contributed to the construction of 4,000 housing units, and sustained advocacy led to the approval of an additional 10,000 houses, now under implementation. In the aftermath of Ditwah, TPA Leader and Opposition Parliamentarian Mano Ganesan raised these concerns in Parliament and formally wrote to President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, requesting an urgent meeting to discuss coordinated and permanent solutions for the affected communities.
At the international level, the importance of land security and housing has also been raised with India’s External Affairs Minister, Dr. S. Jaishankar, building on India’s long-standing partnership in plantation community development. Such engagement reflects an understanding that disaster recovery, when rooted in dignity and prevention, strengthens not only vulnerable communities but national resilience itself.
Climate-related disasters will continue to test Sri Lanka. That reality cannot be wished away. What can change is how the State responds when the risk is known, the laws are available, and the people are already displaced. Emergency powers should not become tools of convenience or control alone. They must be instruments of protection.
Ditwah presents a stark choice. Sri Lanka can either continue the cycle of temporary relief followed by silent returns to danger, or it can treat this moment as a turning point, using the existing law and a restorative recovery vision to place safety, dignity, and prevention at the centre of rebuilding. History will judge not the force of the storm, but the choices made after it.
The writer is the International Relations and Trade Union Affairs Vice President of the TPA’s Democratic People’s Front
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication