COLOMBO, November 7, 2026 — Colombo floods just 24 days after Prime Minister Harini Amarasuriya ordered canals and drains cleared within two weeks.
On October 13, Prime Minister Dr. Harini Amarasuriya instructed government officials to clean Colombo’s canals and drainage systems within two weeks, warning of increased rainfall and the need to ensure that stormwater could flow freely.
The deadline expired on October 27.
Eleven days later, large parts of Colombo were underwater.
Friday evening’s torrential rainfall brought traffic to a standstill, inundated roads and commercial areas, and sent floodwater into several sections of the National Hospital of Sri Lanka.
By Saturday, November 7, authorities were launching special operations to remove accumulated waste, silt and other obstructions from canals across the city.
The sequence of events presents an uncomfortable question for the institutions responsible for maintaining Colombo’s drainage network: Was the Prime Minister’s directive implemented, and if so, why were major waterways still obstructed when the rains arrived?
A Warning Issued Nearly Four Weeks Earlier
The Prime Minister’s instructions were delivered during the Colombo District Coordinating Committee meeting at the District Secretariat in Narahenpita on October 13.
Amarasuriya directed officials to accelerate the cleaning of canals and drainage systems as a special measure ahead of anticipated heavy rainfall.
She specifically required the work to be completed within two weeks and emphasised that routine maintenance should continue thereafter.
The instruction was neither vague nor open-ended. It identified the work, established a deadline and explained the urgency.
Officials from Divisional Secretariats, the Department of Agrarian Development and the Provincial Irrigation Department attended the meeting.
During discussions, they acknowledged operational challenges, including shortages of technical officers and difficulties preparing plans and cost estimates.
Those difficulties were therefore known before the deadline expired.
On October 20, The Morning Telegraph published an article titled Who Is Responsible for Colombo’s Dirty Canals and Drains? PM Gives Two-Week Ultimatum for Cleanup.
That report examined the responsibilities of the institutions involved and questioned why routine drainage maintenance required intervention at the highest level of government.
The events of November 6 have made those questions considerably more urgent.
Colombo Flooded Despite the Advance Warning
Heavy rainfall on Friday evening caused widespread flash flooding across Colombo, affecting roads, residential areas, businesses and essential public services.
The Department of Meteorology recorded approximately 129 millimetres of rainfall in Colombo within a relatively short period, while the Disaster Management Centre recorded 146.6 millimetres in Thimbirigasyaya.
At an emergency meeting on Saturday, Colombo Municipal Council officials reportedly stated that approximately 129 millimetres had fallen within an hour.
They explained that the city’s existing drainage infrastructure was designed to accommodate rainfall of approximately 30 millimetres per hour.
This distinction is important.
The exceptional intensity of the rainfall means that flooding cannot automatically be attributed to inadequate canal cleaning. Even a properly maintained drainage network may struggle when rainfall substantially exceeds its designed capacity.
Nevertheless, officials also identified blocked canals, accumulated rubbish, obstructed waterways and unauthorised construction as contributing factors.
These are precisely the kinds of problems that drainage inspections, canal maintenance and preventive enforcement are intended to address.
The question is therefore not whether cleaning every canal would have prevented all flooding.
It is whether the work ordered by the Prime Minister was completed on time and whether proper maintenance could have reduced the damage.
National Hospital Flooding Exposes the Stakes
Among the most serious consequences of Friday’s flooding was the disruption at the National Hospital of Sri Lanka in Colombo.
Reports indicated that floodwater entered patient wards, the Accident Service, the Outpatient Department, the Radiology Department and operating theatres.
Several elevators in the Accident Service reportedly became inoperable, requiring staff to move patients to other wards.
Particular attention has since turned to Norris Canal.
Reports have linked inadequate cleaning and maintenance of the canal to the flooding, while also identifying unauthorised construction and improper waste disposal by nearby businesses as possible contributing factors.
These reported concerns require proper technical investigation before responsibility can be assigned to any particular authority.
Nevertheless, flooding that disrupts a major national hospital demands an explanation extending beyond the volume of rainfall alone.
Hospitals are critical public infrastructure. Their drainage systems and surrounding waterways warrant particular attention before periods of anticipated heavy rain.
The public is entitled to know whether Norris Canal was inspected following the Prime Minister’s October 13 directive, what maintenance was undertaken and whether any identified obstructions remained unresolved.
Why Did Special Cleaning Begin After the Floods?
On November 7, the Sri Lanka Land Development Corporation and Colombo Municipal Council began special operations to clear obstructed canals and drainage systems.
The locations identified included:
- Serpentine Canal in Dematagoda
- Torrington Canal
- Dehiwala Canal
- Canals surrounding Colombage Mawatha and Kirulapone
The operations involved removing waste, silt and other obstructions to improve rainwater movement.
These emergency measures are necessary. However, their timing deserves scrutiny.
The Prime Minister had already instructed officials to accelerate the same category of maintenance work nearly four weeks earlier.
That does not establish that no cleaning took place during the intervening period. Some canals may have been cleared, while others may have remained blocked or become obstructed again.
Nor has The Morning Telegraph obtained a comprehensive, independently verified record showing which waterways were cleaned before October 27.
Without those records, it would be premature to conclude that officials deliberately ignored the Prime Minister’s instructions.
What is clear is that significant drainage obstructions were still being identified after the floods, and special clearance operations were being announced after the original deadline had passed.
Those facts justify a detailed public accounting of what was accomplished.
Another Task Force, But What Happened to the Original Instructions?
Following Saturday’s emergency discussions, Presidential Secretary Dr. Nandika Sanath Kumanayake instructed authorities to establish a special operations task force under the Colombo Municipal Council.
The proposed mechanism will bring together the Armed Forces, Police and relevant government institutions to strengthen coordination during floods and other emergencies.
Officials also discussed immediate and longer-term drainage improvements, enforcement against improper waste disposal and measures to address unauthorised structures obstructing waterways.
Those proposals address genuine problems.
Yet the establishment of another emergency mechanism does not resolve the question of what happened after the Prime Minister’s earlier instructions.
Was responsibility assigned to specific institutions?
Were written work programmes prepared?
Did officials receive the personnel, equipment and funding required?
Which canals were inspected and cleaned before October 27?
Were progress reports submitted to the Colombo District Coordinating Committee or the Prime Minister’s Office?
And if the original deadline could not be met, who was informed?
Answers to these questions would help establish whether the principal problem was administrative inaction, inadequate resources, poor coordination, insufficient drainage capacity or a combination of those factors.
Accountability Must Extend Beyond the Rainfall
Colombo’s flooding problems cannot be reduced to a single blocked canal or government instruction.
The city faces longstanding drainage challenges involving development, waste disposal, encroachment on waterways, maintenance responsibilities and infrastructure that may be inadequate for increasingly intense downpours.
Responsibility is shared across several institutions, including municipal authorities, agencies responsible for canal management and other government bodies.
Residents and businesses that illegally dump waste also contribute to the problem.
Nonetheless, where a specific preventive instruction is issued by the Prime Minister, public institutions should be able to demonstrate what action followed.
The October 13 directive established a clear expectation: complete urgent canal and drainage cleaning within two weeks and continue maintenance thereafter.
The November 6 floods exposed serious vulnerabilities, while the November 7 emergency response confirmed that obstructed waterways remained a concern.
The Government now needs to publish a dated, location-by-location account of the work completed before the deadline, identify any outstanding maintenance and explain what additional measures are required to protect critical facilities.
Until that information is available, the question remains unanswered:
Did authorities ignore the Prime Minister’s instructions, or were those instructions insufficiently supported, implemented and monitored?
Either possibility demands an explanation.
For Colombo’s residents, businesses and patients, the distinction matters less than ensuring that the next heavy downpour does not produce the same avoidable failures.
