EARTHTREMORS AFFECT SCHOOL BUILDINGS
Both, residents of the area and the teachers of the Kamburugama Maha Vidyalaya expressed their concerns about the dilapidated state of the school buildings that are on the verge of collapse posing a danger to the 1000 odd students and members of the staff. At present 1164 students from low-income families of the area attend the Kamburugamuwa Maha Vidyalaya that has classes up to the GCE Advanced Level in Arts and Commerce streams. However, the building complex of the school had been in a state of disrepair for a l ong time and it has worsened during the recent earth tremors in the area.
The principal of the school however said that the roof of the main hall collapsed and the walls in other buildings cracked during the tremors. “The building complex is more than 100 years old. It had been in a dilapidated state
The buildings of Kamburugama Maha Vidyalaya have been in a dilapidated state for a long time. This situation has been aggravated by the recent earth tremors
even before I took over as the principal. With the help of residents of the area I attended to minor repairs and the colour washing of the buildings and informed the relevant officials on the need to effect immediate repairs to the other buildings in the complex. However, the cracks in the walls appeared only after the earth tremors that may cause the collapse of buildings without warning,” he said.
Meanwhile, District Engineer A. Ranasinghe said at a glance one could judge that the buildings could be fit for use after repairs but that the condition of the foundations had to be checked first. “We must ob- tain a report from the National Building and Research Institute at Jawatta in Colombo on any damage that could have been caused to the foundations by the disturbance. A column bearing one of the main beams has cracked and that may have resulted in some damage to the foundation. However we have not yet received any report on a similar damage caused to any other building in the locality. The Provincial Council will provide funds to repair the school building after examining the Building Research Institute’s report,” the district engineer said.
In this issue the residents of the area took another view. They said that the school should be shifted to a safer location without exposing their children to any danger until the school buildings were repaired.