Press briefing of Cabinet Decision taken on 2017-09-12

Construction of small bridges for the convenient transportation of communities in the remote areas

- It has been observed that in the most difficult remote areas in Sri Lanka, there are around 1,500 locations where people commute with the use of extremely unprotected temporarily erected trunk bridges across streams and rivers and in about 500 locations where people commute by crossing rivers and streams with difficulty without any kind of safety measures put in place. Therefore, it is essential to construct small bridges with the objective to providing safe transportation for the people living in such remote areas. In this respect, the National Engineering Research and Development Centre (NERDC) has been successful in designing and experimenting a long term durable special foot bridges at a low cost with the use of advanced technology.

Accordingly, the proposal made by Hon. Susil Premajayantha, the Minister of Science, Technology and Research, to identify the locations where people commute unsafely by crossing streams, rivers etc. and construct 1,000 bridges within the forthcoming three years, was approved by the Cabinet.