State Minister of Defence Hon. Premitha Bandara Tennakoon chaired a meeting with representatives of UN agencies, INGOs and NGOS to educate them on the ongoing rescue and relief operations to assist bad weather affected communities, at his office in Colombo, yesterday(Jun 05).

The State Minister presented the UN agency, INGO and NGO officials with the latest development in weather and progress of the ongoing relief operations carried out by disaster management authorities through District and Divisional Secretariats in coordination with tri forces, police, Civil Security Department and other state officials.

He highly appreciated the assistance and cooperation that was readily facilitated by the UN agencies, INGOs and NGOs for providing relief to flood victims and he said that more was needed to be done in post disaster repair and rebuilding stages to restore civilian life affected by this disaster. He further requested them to enhance their assistance and allocations towards relief work.

He especially requested their assistance towards repairing schools, where many safe centres are located providing shelter to a large number of flood victims and damaged houses.

The UN agency, INGO and NGO officials expressed willingness to provide all assistance in this regard. 

Disaster Management Centre officials, and representatives of UN agencies including Unicef, WHO, Red Cross, World Vision etc and NGOs were also present at the discussion.