Post tsunami recovery capacity gaps in Sri Lanka

Poor response capacity has been identified as a major inhibitor for successful post tsunami recovery attempts in Sri Lanka. Despite level of incentives aid and help which have been received from the international communities, both governmental and nongovernmental organisations, have evidently failed to deliver expected levels of performance in post tsunami recovery activities. It is of utmost importance to identify and overcome the related capacity gaps if Sri Lanka is ever to recover from the December 2004 devastation and any future disasters. Within the light of this, as the first step towards recovery, the country must fully understand the nature and scale of its capacity gaps related to the post disaster recovery. Addressing this issue, the EURASIA (European and Asian Infrastructure Advantage) international collaborative research programme has conducted a series of interviews with key personnel in Sri Lanka to explore the nature and magnitude of this problem. The main objective of this paper is to present the outcome of these key expert interviews highlighting the priority attention areas and possible actions towards minimising the post tsunami recovery capacity gaps in Sri Lanka