Sri Lanka Tea Workers Among Hardest Hit as Floods and Landslides Kill More Than 640

More than 640 people were killed and hundreds remained missing after heavy rains triggered by Cyclone Ditwah caused floods and landslides across Sri Lanka's southern highlands, with tea plantations and their workers among the hardest hit.

At the Craighhead estate, Arumugam Manikavalli fled to a nearby temple for safety as the earth trembled and rain pounded the hillside. In the same region, tea worker Kumaran Elumugam's small home was crushed by a landslide, killing six family members. He survived because he was at work along with a daughter. "My wife, son-in-law, daughter, mother-in-law, two grandsons are all dead," Elumugam lamented. "The small one (granddaughter) is still under the mud."

Many tea plantation workers belong to the Malaiyaha Tamil ethnic group, descendants of Tamil indentured laborers brought from southern India by British colonists more than 200 years ago. The industry generates billions of dollars in revenue for Sri Lanka but most workers earn well below the official minimum wage of 1,200 rupees (about $4) per day and have little access to land, housing or basic services. A report by the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies found that most tea plantation workers own no land or homes and live in colonial-era working quarters barely bigger than 100 square feet, sometimes housing as many as eight family members with shared bathrooms and limited sanitation.

Experts pointed out that the hillside settlements are more exposed to slope failures than estates on flatter ground. "The settlements were in much more dangerous areas," said Melanie Gunathilaka, a Colombo-based climate activist and researcher. "This shows the amount of value placed on the lives of these people."

Requests for comment from the Planters Association of Ceylon were not immediately answered. The Planters Association did not respond to requests for comment.

Officials said the government has responded with relief but the scale of destruction is enormous. The government said more than 100,000 houses were destroyed or damaged across the country. It has promised compensation packages to rebuild houses or to relocate families to safer lands and build new houses. Sundaralingam Pradeep, Sri Lanka's deputy minister for plantations and community infrastructure, told The Associated Press that the government is negotiating with tea companies to identify lands to build homes for all those affected, including retirees living in company line houses. He said an Indian-assisted project to build 7,000 homes will provide the first batch of houses for the impacted workers.

Tea workers say help can’t come soon enough. "We are so scared when it rains," said Karuppiah Kamani, pointing to a huge rock next to her home at the edge of a tea plantation. Sellamuttu Darshani Devi, another tea worker, said she and her family were asked to move as a precaution after the worst landslides. Her house has so far been unaffected, but she’s afraid to go back now. "We are so scared when it rains," Devi said. She added that despite the disaster she had to go pick tea leaves at the estates because owners refused to provide support unless workers continued to toil. "When it gets sunny, the authorities tell us to go back. We need a home desperately," she said.

Beyond the immediate crisis, Sri Lanka's climate and debt realities shape resilience. The country accounts for less than 1% of global greenhouse gases but is among the nations most at risk from climate-change impacts. The United Nations says Sri Lanka loses more than $300 million each year to climate-triggered extreme weather. About 750,000 people are affected by such events annually, and nearly 19 million of Sri Lanka's 23 million people live in disaster-prone, low-lying or otherwise vulnerable areas.

Experts say rebuilding resilience is difficult in a country grappling with a heavy debt burden. "In countries like Sri Lanka, disasters don’t break the system. What disasters do is they expose the already broken systems," said Sandun Thudugala of the Colombo nonprofit Law and Society Trust. Climate activist Gunathilaka argued that the debt burden forces a priority on growth at the expense of resilience and that more climate-resilient homes and stronger early-warning infrastructure would help if the country did not also carry heavy loans and high interest rates.

Global leaders have acknowledged that trillions of dollars are needed to adapt to climate change, a sum that Sri Lanka and other developing economies say is essential to protecting vulnerable communities. For the people in Sri Lanka's hill provinces, the urgency is undeniable.