FACT CHECK: Damaged Road Shown in The Photo is Not Neluwa Lankagama Road, Here’s The Truth…

There was strong opposition by several parties few months ago, when the Sri Lanka Army’s Engineering Regiment had commenced reconstruction of the Lankagama-Neluwa road that connects the Lankagama village to Deniyaya town, located along the southern border of the Sinharaja rainforest. In response to these protests, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa personally visited the area in late August and instructed those in charge to complete the reconstruction work of the road within three months and to ensure that there would not be extensive environmental harm.

Our investigations revealed that while there had been several photos shared of Lankagama-Neluwa road, which showed shortcomings after heavy rains, the image of sunken and split open road being shared as the Lankagama road was completely false.

SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT:

Showing a photo of a badly broken and split-open rural road with the caption: “A road constructed after sir personally inspected”, a post was shared by Ruwan Sanjeewa and number of other Facebook users. Here the word “sir” is implied to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Investigating the photo itself, we discovered that several other posts containing the same image were published on social media with similar satirical sentiments.

Fact Check

We began our fact check with a Google Reverse Image search but could not ascertain where the original photo came from. What we did discover was that several other social media posts published since October 1^st this year had used the image to publish similar sentiments, a month after the president’s visit to the area in late August. Many comments on these posts expressed concern about the danger of taking photos at a location like that.

Other posts with the photo, shared on social media on October 1st, were compared with the photo going viral recently as the Lankagama-Neluwa road, which confirmed that it was the same photo.

In order to verify these claims further, we sent the photo to several residents of Lankagama including one Mr. Sumith Chaminda who used the road daily. He told us that the photo was not taken there because the Neluwa-Lankagama road had not been subject to any extensive damage as shown.

Next, we contacted the Road Development Authority’s Galle Regional Office and sent them the photo for verification as well. The office confirmed to us that the photo did not depict the Neluwa-Lankagama road, nor had it been carpeted or damaged like the image indicated by October 1.

Furthermore, a series of photos shared on social media recently that showed shortcomings of the Lankagama-Neluwa roadwork spurred a visit from Minister Johnston Fernando and his team. Minister claimed that a completely misleading picture had circulated on social media, using pictured of several locations of the Lankagama road, which had eroded due to heavy rains.

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Conclusion
Our investigation clearly indicated that the photo shared by several people (including Ruwan Sanjeewa) implying it to be of the Neluwa- Lankagama road was entirely false as no such erosion or road damage had taken place in the area.