Sri Lanka’s tea workers hit hardest as floods and landslides kill hundreds

Heavy rains from Cyclone Ditwah triggered floods and landslides across Sri Lanka in November, killing more than 640 people and leaving more than a hundred missing, officials said. The central highlands and tea plantation regions were among the hardest hit, with authorities reporting the destruction or damage of more than 100,000 houses. The disaster underscored the vulnerability of people living in hillside communities where decades of slow-building poverty meet extreme weather driven by climate change.

On the Craighead Estate, Arumugam Manikavalli woke to a roar of rain and moving earth and fled from her home to a nearby temple on the estate for safety. In the same evening, tea worker Kumaran Elumugam’s small house was crushed by a landslide, killing six family members. He survived only because he was away at work, along with a daughter. “My wife, son-in-law, daughter, mother-in-law, two grandsons are all dead,” Elumugam said. “The small one (granddaughter) is still under the mud.” Manikavalli and Elumugam were among the fortunate who reached safety as heavy rains from Cyclone Ditwah drove floods and landslides across the country. Thousands of families in the tea belt faced similar fates as hillside homes — often primitive, 150-year-old structures — were swept away or buried under debris.

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Tea plantation workers, the lifeblood of Sri Lanka’s famed export, are predominantly Malaiyaha Tamils, descendants of indentured laborers brought from southern India by British colonists more than two centuries ago. The community makes up a large share of the hill-region population, yet many live far below the daily minimum wage of 1,200 Sri Lankan rupees (about $4) with little access to education, healthcare or stable housing. A report by the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies describes plantation workers who own no land or homes and reside in crowded quarters barely larger than 100 square feet, with as many as eight family members sharing a single space and often sharing bathrooms or lacking sanitation.

Melanie Gunathilaka, a Colombo-based climate activist and researcher, noted that many of the worst-hit settlements were located on the steeper slopes closer to mountain edges, where the danger from landslides is greater. “The settlements were in much more dangerous areas,” she said. “This shows the amount of value placed on the lives of these people.” The Planters Association of Ceylon, which represents Sri Lanka’s tea companies and estates, did not respond to requests for comment.

The government said more than 100,000 houses were destroyed or damaged in the disaster and announced compensation packages to help rebuild homes or relocate families to safer land. Deputy Minister for Plantations and Community Infrastructure Sundaralingam Pradeep told The Associated Press that the government is negotiating with tea companies to identify land for housing for those affected, including retirees living in company line houses. He said an Indian-assisted project to build 7,000 homes would provide the first batch of houses for workers who lost their homes.

Residents say relief can’t come quickly enough. “It doesn’t feel safe to be living here,” said Karuppiah Kamani, pointing to a large rock near her home at the edge of a tea plantation. Sellamuttu Darshani Devi and her family were moved as a precaution after the worst landslides. Although her house has remained intact so far, she fears returning to the site. “We are so scared when it rains,” Devi said. “When it gets sunny, the authorities tell us to go back. We need a home desperately.”

Sri Lanka accounts for less than 1% of planet-warming greenhouse gases yet remains among the nations most at risk from climate-driven extreme weather. The United Nations has said Sri Lanka loses more than $300 million each year to climate-triggered events, and that hundreds of thousands of people are affected annually. About 750,000 are affected each year, and nearly 19 million of Sri Lanka’s 23 million people live in low-lying, landslide-prone or otherwise disaster-vulnerable areas. Building resilience, however, is complicated by a debt load that includes loans from the International Monetary Fund and other creditors. The country’s dependence on tourism — a sector hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic turmoil — has also constrained fiscal space.

Analysts say disasters in Sri Lanka tend to expose, rather than break, a system that is already stressed. “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-based nonprofit Law and Society Trust. Climate activist Gunathilaka warned that the debt burden pressures the country to prioritize short-term economic growth over investments that could reduce disaster risk, such as climate-resilient housing and early warning infrastructure, unless the financial constraints are addressed. She suggested that reallocating resources to resilience would, in the long run, reduce exposure and improve response capacity in future storms.

For workers like Chellaya Pathmanathan, a tea plantation laborer sheltering in a government school with his family after their home was damaged, the fear of another round of extreme weather remains constant. “We want to create a safe future for our kids. I hope someone can help us,” he said, underscoring the urgent need for faster, more durable relief and long-term protections against climate risks in Sri Lanka’s hill regions.