Urban council balangoda

Balangoda is a small and well planed town in Sabaragamuwa Province, Ratnapura District and Balangoda Divisional Secretariat area in Sri Lanka. 150 km distant from capital city Colombo. The Urban Council established in 1945 by British colonial and the first mayor is Mr. Barnes Ratwatte Disawe who was the father of late world's first lady prime minster Sirimawo Bandaranayake. Then the world famous Buddhist monk Ven. Balangoda Ananda Maithereya thero was born and residence in the city. The normal temperature change between 20o C to 30o C. The beautiful and mountainous situation around the area. A great deal of the inhabitants work in this area agriculture, gem mining and tea planting sectors. These sectors however also have a negative impact on the environmental sustainability of the city. Increasing congestion waste water problem, poverty and highly increasing the values of lands. The city implements a best waste management system in including, composting, polythene/plastic recycling, recyclable waste colection, school waste management programs, night soil treatment, and a resilient city program.

It was first started as the "Seniority Board" and 11 mayors have ruled this urban council up to now. This urban council has also been ruled by a special commissioner for another 9 years. The present mayor of the Balangoda urban council is Mr. Nimal Gamini Weerasinghe. This Urban council area is about 16.2 square kilometers in size and the present permanent resident human population of this urban area is about 35,875.and Floating population 50,000 per day. Balangoda urban council facilitates almost all the basic common needs of about 50,000 people who enter the city for various types of purposes daily. The staff consists of 117 permanent and 65 substitute members are always ready to provide a good service to the public.

**Population Information** 

Total Population of the area – 77,026 

Metropolitan population -56,785

**Historical Importance**

There is evidence of Paleolithic (Homo Erectus) people in Sri Lanka about 300,000 BP and possibly even as early as 500,000 BP. There is strong evidence of prehistoric settlements in Sri Lanka by about 125,000 BP. Anthropologically modern human remains have been found which have been dated back to the subsequent culture of the second Stone Age period - which appears to have endured until about 1000 BCE in Sri Lanka with the transition to Iron working. This Mesolithic culture was known as the Balangoda Culture. The Balangoda Man appears to have been responsible for creating Horton Plains, in the central hills, by burning the trees in order to catch game. However, discovery of oats and barley on the plains dating to about 15,000 BCE suggests that they also may have engaged in agriculture. The place called Bellan Bandi Palassa is also situated near Balangoda town.

**Geological Importance**

Geologically Balangoda lies in the highland series of the Sri Lankan Precambrian complex comprising metamorphic rocks, which have been folded in to form the Balangoda syncline. Also, the boundary between the Highland complex (HC) and Vijayan complex (VC) lies on this area.

## National Productivity Award winner urban council of year 2005 in Sri Lanka and Green job award 2009 and 2010 ,Green Silva award 2011 , 2012 awarded Ministry of Environment & Natural resources 
National Productivity award competition - 2005 was organized by the National Productivity Secretariat (Ministry of Productivity Promotion) and Balangoda urban council was able to win the award for the best urban council in Sri Lanka. As this urban council provides a unique service to the public, these awards are the positive feedbacks to motivate the staff members to continue the good service with better improvements. The estimated time required to get a Street line certificate, approval for water/ electricity supply or to get an approval for a building plan and the names of required documents are displayed on the notice boards. All the staff members are duty bound to provide instant service. The printed community response forums and the electronic community response forums (for the first time in Sri Lanka) are used to get the response of the public and to make positive changes to cater the public with a maximum service. The urban council has the ability to respond the clients within 48 hours through this electronic community response service. The public have the ability to connect with the urban council through social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube etc. So it is very easy for the public to connect with the Balangoda urban council from anywhere of the world. This is the first Sri Lankan urban council that provides a service through social networking websites. More than that Urban council got the second place of best service providers in 2011 ,2012 in Sri Lanka organized by Ministry of Local government and Provincial Council

## Asia's Biggest Environmental Friendly Compost Project 
The garbage collected by the urban council is divided in to two as decaying garbage and non-decaying garbage. Non-decaying garbage (e.g.: Plastic, glass) is being sold and the decaying garbage is used to make compost. Asia's largest compost project belongs to Balangoda urban council and this project is the leading compost project among the few successful compost projects in the country. Training programs for making compost are also being conducted here.

## Sri lanka's First and Only Fully Automated Electronic Library. 
Balangoda urban council maintains the first and only local authority owned fully automated electronic library in Sri Lanka. Electronic books, e-encyclopedias, e-maps, e-gazettes, educational CDs, DVDs and many more electronic sources are there in this library. School children, Teachers, university students and the people in the society get the maximum use of this. All the computers in this library are exclusively controlled by special fully automated software which speaks with the users. This is the only e-library which uses this kind of software.

## e-Balangoda Information Technology Promotion Project 
The very first information technology promotion project launched in Sri Lanka by a local authority is e-balangoda project. The main objective of this project is making aware the public regarding the latest issues of the modern technology and to lead the nation towards the global village. Holding one day internet workshops for government servants, conducting special ICT lectures and workshops for students and un-employees, conducting computer courses are the main services of this project. Furthermore promoting the Sinhala Unicode system and open source software among the society is done through this project.