Case study:

I happened to visit two villages in the North recently, one in Mannar district and the other is in Killinochchi district.

I decided to write here about this visit in SLEN because, the communities I met during this visit, have raised issues of engineering significance.

First one is Talaimannar pier GN division. Communities in this village have been encountering flooding problem since one of the new bridges was built in this area. People believe that the construction of this bridge is the cause for this flooding which never happened in this area before. People raised questions as to why the bridge designers or the development planners couldn’t factor into the possible flooding problem which could occur as a result of the construction of this bridge in this area.

I just leave the rest to the concerned authorities or the engineers who is responsible for this area to take this issue further. I am sure this must have been brought to his/her attention.

The second village I happened to be is in Poonagary DS division. This village has a serious problem of sea intrusion into their paddy field every year, which had badly impacted their cultivation and livelihood. The community seems to think that this problem could be solved by building a bund to avoid sea water coming in to their paddy fields.

I was discussing on disaster preparedness aspects of these communities and communities raised these issues and I find these are somehow related to engineering aspects. Therefore I just thought of bringing it to the attention of the engineers who may be working in the areas of concern.

District Engineers of Mannar and Killinochchi, this is over to you!

Eng. Aslam Saja

September 2011