Claim: Deputy Minister of Housing T B Sarath has participated in a ceremony to inaugurate a toilet.
Fact: The photos were actually taken at an event in the Polonnaruwa area in 2019. The Ministry of Urban Development, Construction, and Housing has confirmed that the news circulating on social media is false.
A post is being widely shared on social media claiming to show Polonnaruwa District Parliamentarian and Deputy Minister of Housing, T B Sarath, recently inaugurating a toilet. Users sharing the claim also posted images of the deputy minister standing next to a toilet.
A user on X shared this post and added the Sinhala caption reads, “Deputy Minister opens a toilet at the ceremony.”
Another user who posted this on Facebook wrote: “The toilet problem in Sri Lanka is very serious. To address this, under the Clean Sri Lanka Project, the Hon. Member of Parliament, Mr. T B Sarath, along with Anura Kumara Dissanayake, introduced the ‘Toilet for All’ concept. The first toilet was symbolically opened at the National Festival.”
Similar posts can be seen here, here, here, here, here and here.
Factcheck / Verification
We checked mainstream media for any relevant reports to verify if the Deputy Minister of Housing had indeed inaugurated a toilet recently.
We found a video of Member of Parliament Dayasiri Jayasekara speaking to the media published on the YouTube channel of Hiru TV on March 24, 2025, where he can be heard saying, “Minister T B Sarath has opened a toilet and posted it on Facebook.” This video was also shared on the Hiru News Facebook page.
We also found a news article titled “The Deputy Minister has opened a new toilet and posted the photo on Facebook,” published on the front page of the Aruna Sinhala newspaper on March 25, 2025, with further details on the second page.The article describes Dayasiri Jayasekara’s statement, which was previously published on Hiru News. The article can be found through the Aruna E-paper.
However, neither of these news items included the photos circulating on social media, which claim to show the same incident. To further confirm this, we used Google Reverse Image Search on the photos shared on social media. The search revealed that the images being circulated had been posted on a Facebook account under the name T B Sarath on March 4, 2019.
The Ministry of Urban Development, Construction, and Housing issued a clarification regarding reports claiming that Polonnaruwa District MP and Deputy Minister of Housing T B Sarath recently participated in a ceremony to open a toilet. The Ministry confirmed that the reports circulating on social media were false and that the incident actually took place five years ago.
According to the statement, T B Sarath, along with some youth activists in the area, had helped build a toilet for a family in need. This was done as a charitable act, not a formal ceremony. Additionally, the event happened before he was appointed as Deputy Minister.
Furthermore, in a phone call interview with the NewsCenter YouTube channel, Deputy Minister T B Sarath confirmed that the news published on some major media outlets and shared on social media is false. He clarified that the photos being circulated were taken during a social welfare project conducted five years ago.
Conclusion
The Ministry of Urban Development, Construction, and Housing has confirmed through a statement that the claim of Deputy Minister of Housing T B Sarath recently opening a toilet is false. The photos being shared were taken during a social welfare project that occurred five years ago, prior to his appointment as Deputy Minister.
Result: False
Our Sources
Press release from the Ministry of Urban Development, Construction, and Housing, published on Newswire LK, dated March 25, 2025.
Facebook post by T B Sarath, dated March 4, 2019.
Deputy Minister T.B. Sarath’s phone interview posted on the NewsCenter YouTube channel, dated March 24, 2025.
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