I am beginning to learn the weather every Poya Day holiday in Sri Lanka is associated with rain and today is no exception; it has been raining all day! Flooding and landslides in Sri Lanka have been a national problem during monsoon for many years with infrastructure heavily impacted – power, telecommunications and transport to name a few. We watched many three wheelers (Tuks), cars and motorbikes try braving the flooded Colombo roads outside our apartment only to stall their engines and then needing to reverse and push their vehicles out of harm’s way.
Local businesses during Poya Days are mostly closed, and considering the power & telecommunications interruptions, I begin thinking it is probably a good thing for consumers trying to use their Visa Cards and not being able to access funds through a POS or ATM without power and network communications. On the other hand, is it? What impact has this had over the years with local Sri Lankans confidence in the local infrastructure to support electronic banking reliably? Clearly another area of focus…
