Wednesday, 29 April 2015 01:54
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By AshwinHemmathagama
Our Lobby Correspondent
The Sri Lankan military made history on Sunday by taking the lead in the Nepalese earthquake relief mission, which goes beyond the regular deployment of troops on a peacekeeping mission underthe United Nations, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe informed Parliament on Monday.
“Parliament approval is required to send the military outsidea country’s bordersin many countries. This is not required in Sri Lanka. In the absence of such legal obligation to the Parliament, I want to make precedence from today to keep the House informed about our military and its deployments. A Sri Lanka Air Force plane with 44 personnel including medical and other technical staff on-board with medicines left for Kathmandu on Sunday morning under the leadership of Major General Maithree Dias,” Wickremesinghe informed Parliament.
The Sri Lanka team is responsible for the relief and welfare missions in Dholalgart, located 60 km north east from Kathmandu.
“We will be despatching an additional aircraft soon with medical advisors, doctors, and other medical staff, with medicines required to treat the earthquake victims. The team will also include sniffer dogs to recover people buried under debris. In addition a SriLankan Airlines flight will take tea, rice, dry rations, drinking water, blankets, tentsand other essentials,” he added, assuring continuous support to Nepal based on the Buddhist relations with the country.
According to the Prime Minister, the United States and India were the other two nations that came to the rescue of Nepalese at short notice immediately after the earthquake.
