Pollution threat to wewa ruffles farmers

12 June 2018 10:10 am Views - 1370

There is a factory belonging to a close kinsman of a leading politico in a paddy cultivating area in the country. 


Peasant-residents had recently stumbled on an impending threat to their livelihood: the factory owner has got a gang to cut a drain from the factory leading to the ‘Punchibandalage -wewa’ as a convenient means of disposing of the factory effluent and sewage. 


This wewa (tank) currently serves both as an inland fisheries resource and a source for irrigating 500-acre paddy tract and the people in the area are highly concerned that the factory effluent and sewage would pollute the wewa posing a threat to both fish farming and the paddy cultivation.


Numerous complaints in this regard have been made to a white-collar high-up in charge of the Zone, but the drain-cutting continues regardless, they say.