The government said that no more garbage will be dumped at the Meetotamulla site, where at least twelve persons were killed following the collapse of the garbage mountain yesterday.
Deputy Foreign Minister Harsha de Silva said that the government has identified two temporary sites to dump the garbage.
“No more garbage will be dumped at this site and two temporary sites were identified this morning,” Dr. Silva stated in a facebook massage.
He also revealed that State will bear all funeral expenses of the ten persons who lost their lives (could be more) and immediately begin evacuations of those under threat.
“It's ironic that it was only a few weeks back that agreements were signed to begin waste to energy projects to finally deal with this perennial issue,” he said.
However, he said that it's unfortunate that even though payments had been made for those families under risk of land slides to move out some had not done so. They had even been advised to leave as recently as two days ago.
On the instructions of President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe a coordination committee to management of the situation was established this morning. Ministers Susil Premjayanth, Patali Champika Ranawaka, A H M Fowzie, Dr Harsha de Silva, Sagala Ratnayake, Mohan Lal Grero, MPs S M Marikar and Mujibur Rahman, Army Commander and the IGP and all relevant government officials were also present at the meeting.
Major General Sudantha Ranasinghe has been appointed as the in charge of search and rescue where an area of about 150m by 75m is being carefully cleaned up.
Already close to a hundred people have been shifted to temporarily holding locations; schools and others will be shifted as well. The Prime Minister has ordered the release all necessary funds from the Treasury to deal with all financial requirements, Dr. Silva added.
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