The Disaster Relief Network (DRN) has set up operation at the airport in Colombo and signed an agreement with the Government of Sri Lanka to receive all incoming relief commodities. Agencies / organisations who are sending relief commodities to Sri Lanka are requested to provide the following information on the virtual OSOCC in addition to the clearance request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The information required by DRN and necessary to be provided comprises of:

• - Cargo specification
• - weight and quantity
• - origin
• - Consignee (or unsolicited)
• - A contact point of the receiving agency in Sri Lanka and instructions on how to contact
• - Specification if commodities are for common use or for specific agency

DRN will keep the commodities in a storage facility in the airport for a maximum of seven days. If the receiving organisation has not picked up these commodities, it will be handed over to the Government of Sri Lanka. This service is only available for pure relief commodities.

E-mail address of DRN at the airport in colombo where info on incoming commodities should be sent to: aet_cmb@hotmail.com

DRN operates with the following characteristics:

• 2 x 12 hours shifts (24 hour service) from 0800-2000 hrs.
• 15 x International staff + 40 Sri Lankan Air Force cadets + 10 contracted laborers
• Operation has 8 forklifts
• 2 x Donated by local company
• 2 x Sri Lankan Airlines
• 4 x DRN owned (will be extracted upon DRN withdrawal*)
• Sri Lankan Air Force offloads aircraft
• DRN tasks include activities from airstrip to warehouse to trucks, which include:
• Palletizing of cargo
• Storing/stacking
• Record keeping
• Managing of stocks until taken by GoSL or NGO
• DRN handles charter aircraft, while Sri Lankan Airlines handles commercial aircraft bringing in relief supplies.
• DRN has handled 6,000 MT of humanitarian/relief cargo since 29 Dec 04