TSUNAMI IMPACT-SRI LANKA:
Pledges and More Pledges, But Where Are the Houses?
Amantha Perera
HABARADUWA, Sri Lanka, May 25 (IPS) - In his 68 years, V T Piyasena has never lived through anything like the last five months. He
lost a daughter and his son-in-law in the Dec. 26 tsunami, and was left with a partially
damaged house.
''It has been absolute hell, I never want to go through it again,'' he told IPS standing inside
his half-brick house, half-tent home near Habaraduwa in southern Sri Lanka.
Last week international donors pledged an unprecedented 3 billion U.S. dollars in tsunami
reconstruction aid to Sri Lanka during the Sri Lanka Development Forum held in the central
city of Kandy. The pledge, at the latest conversion rate would be 300 billion rupees. But it
did not make any difference to Piyasena.
''No one knows what we have suffered in the last five months, look around, we are living in
a tent, it is terribly hot, we still collect water from bowsers and there is no news where or
when we will get new houses,'' Piyasena's wife Nanda Gamage said.
Like many other tsunami victims, Piyasena and his family believe they would only benefit
from aid once permanent houses are built.
Part of the frustration is due to the slow reconstruction effort, which followed the massive
emergency relief, soon after the tsunami hit.
On Dec. 26, the world's strongest earthquake in 40 years shook the region, with its
epicentre under the sea in the northernmost tip of the Indonesian archipelago. The
resulting tsunamis wreaked havoc around the Bay of Bengal, from Sri Lanka, India and the
low-lying Maldives in the west, to Thailand and Malaysia in the east. Across Asia, about
290,000 people are either dead or missing after the tsunamis.
In Sri Lanka, the Asian tsunami killed over 30,000 and left a million people internally
displaced.
Soon after the tsunami's destructive waves lashed the South-east Asian island, hundreds
of local and foreign aid groups and volunteers poured into the disaster areas. But their
efforts have not been matched by the reconstruction programme spearheaded by the
government.
A day before the donor conference, the Sri Lankan government said that out of an
estimated total of 77,561 houses only 119 had been completed by May 15.
''The government officials are yet to even identify where we are to relocate. There is no
information. How can we trust that aid will help us? asked H Punyasiri, whose house like
Piyasena's is located within the 100 metre buffer zone where new construction is banned.
Government agencies last week said that around 55,000 new homes would have to be
built to replace those destroyed within the buffer zone. However the World Bank upped the
figure to 70,000.
''The proposed policy (of the buffer zone) would result in over 60 percent of the damaged
housing units (about 70,000) in the coastal belt requiring relocation outside the buffer
zone,'' the Bank said in a report titled 'The Economy, the Tsunami and Poverty Reduction'.
It is those who had their houses within the buffer zone who feel the most victimised.
Wilson Gunathileke spends his days sitting in front of his wooden temporary house, near
the famous tourist beach at Polhena in Matara, near the southern town of Galle.
''Some of these officials don't know where the beach is, they have no idea about the sea.
Anyway by the time they get to us, they have already made the decisions,'' he told IPS. ''For
the last four months I have lived either in a tent or a wooden shack and there is no sign of
that changing.''
If change does not take place fast enough, some of the donors warned at the meeting,
which ended on May 17, that problems will aggravate even further.
''Rising poverty and unemployment, worsened by the tsunami and slow development in
conflict-affected areas, threaten Sri Lanka's social sector gains,'' said the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP) in a report released at last week's review of aid to the
island.
The report notes the tsunami-magnified development challenges - persistent slow
growth, rising unemployment and malnutrition in rural areas and the conflict districts in
the north and east.
''The tsunami disaster has increased the vulnerability of a large proportion of the very
people whose income was to be uplifted under the government's poverty reduction
programme,'' the report said.
More than a quarter of the affected population is estimated to be living below the poverty
line of 1,423 rupees (14 U.S. dollars) per month. The total loss of jobs due to the tsunami
is approximately 200,000.
Economic growth forecasts have been cut by one percentage point to 5.0 for 2005. The
Central Bank says the country needs six to eight percent growth to tackle poverty and
unemployment. Last year growth was a 5.4 percent. (END/2005)
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