welcome to our viewers on pbs in america and around the globe. sri lanka s president gotabaya rajapaksa has left the country amid mass protests over its economic crisis, and he s landed in the maldives. mr rajapaksa left aboard a militaryjet, ending a family dynasty that has ruled the country for decades. he had been in hiding, after crowds stormed his residence on saturday. sources have told the bbc his brother, former finance minister basil rajapaksa, has also left the country. the president had promised to resign, but by remaining in position, he kept his immunity from prosecution. i want to show you some pictures from the presidential office itself in colombo. people expect a resignation to be announced. we have heard that the speaker of parliament saying nothing yet, but there should be something official by this evening colombo time. quite a few hours still to wait if that is the case, but crowds expectant in anticipation of the president s resignation. they blame him f
welcome to newsday we start with breaking news. it s six am in singapore and three thirty am in sri lanka where injust the last hour the bbc has confirmed that sri lanka s president gotabaya rajapaksa has left the country days after popular protests forced him to abandon his official residence and after several earlier failed attempts to leave. he left by plane. his destination is not clear, but it s understood he had earlier tried to travel to the united arab emirates. president rajapaksa had promised to resign, but by remaining in position, he kept his immunity from prosecution. many sri lankans blame him for the economic crisis which has crippled their country leaving it short of funds to buy medicines or fuel. i m joined now by david brewster, a specialist in sri lankan politics with the australia national university. great university. to get you on the program, david. great to get you on the program, david. just to start by saying, the dramatic developments we ve h
And it is important once it had that that the government acted on it i as swiftly as possible. Of course i know thei timing is frustrating. But i want to give people a sense of the scale of what we are grappling with here. There are around 22,000 schools. In england and the important thing to know is we are expecting 95 of those schools will not be impacted by this, i around 50 schools have already been mitigated. Another 100 are in the process of being so. 0ur Expectation is in a matter of weeks the bulk of the remaining schools that will have this issue will be identified as well. Also an important context to know is that in many cases this could be limited to a single classroom i for example, so people should have a sense of scale of what might be happening as well. Earlier, a former top Civil Servant at the Department For Education accused mr sunak and the uk treasury of refusing to fund School Repairs adequately, despite being warned that lives were at risk from crumbling concrete
And a mad scramble right at the start of a new school year, to find alternatives. We have three companies coming out today that are trying to help us procure temporary classrooms. We dont know yet whether we have managed to get any, and how long they will take to be delivered. But we are obviously flat out working on it. 104 schools have so far found themselves having to close entirely or partially because of unsafe raac concrete. This morning, the Education Secretary said there could be hundreds more affected, as the government was still waiting to hear from 1,500 schools about whether they have this concrete in their buildings. There will be some surveys still to do. The vast majority of surveys we do come back without raac. But where we find it, we will treat everyone as critical, and we will either prop them up or put temporary accommodation into place. And then we will refurbish or rebuild them if needed. Labour accused the government putting childrens lives at risk, as a former C