DEVELOPMENT-SRI LANKA: Colombo Bid To Be South Asia Financial Hub

By Feizal Samath Reprint | | Print |

Feizal Samath

COLOMBO, Mar 12 1999 (IPS) - Like many poor residents of the Sri Lankan capital, Sriya Kanthi who lives in a slum near a polluted canal, relishes the thought of moving with her family to more pleasant surroundings with piped water and other benefits.

“Anything is better than this life of misery,” she says cheerfully, taking an evening bath at a roadside tap at Wanathamulla, while other slum dwellers wait for their turn.

Her two-room hut rented from a neighbour at 150 rupees (2.2 dollars) is bare except for a few blackened pots and pans in the kitchen, and her little daughter’s pretty pink “party” dress is hung carefully on the wall.

Kanthi, 38, makes a living packing tea leaves and is often beaten up by her husband, an odd-job worker and drunk, whenever she refuses to part with her money.

Half of Colombo’s 700,000 population lives in unauthorised tiny shacks in slums and shanties or “under-served settlements” in the midst of a rapidly changing skyline and new high rises that portray an artificial exterior of an affluent city.

Sri Lanka is the first country in the region to open its economy to free trade and now, government planners want to make Colombo the financial and port hub of South Asia. But standing in the way are 350,000 squatters who have resisted attempts over the years by governments to relocate them, often turning to politicians for help.

Recently an ambitious project was launched to resettle the squatters, who occupy about 8 percent of the land in the city, without any extra financial burden to these people or the state.

Under this programme, squatters will be provided with more comfortable housing and basic services where they live or elsewhere while the land they squat on would be sold to commercial developers.

Krishan Deheragoda, director of the Sustainable Townships Programme (STP) under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, said their vision was to develop the city of Colombo for the next millennium.

He said the Wanathamulla slum with its 21,000 families, about 3 km from the city centre, would be developed as the Colombo Millennium Township and hopes this effort would set off a ripple- effect in which other slums would join up once the benefits are known.

At Wanathamulla, Colombo’s biggest slum, up to 3,500 families live on a disused garbage dump, bordering a polluted canal, alongside dozens of stray cattle, cats, dogs and rats. Another 17,500 families live elsewhere in the area but under the same abysmal conditions.

The Colombo Millennium Township on 55 hectares of land will provide residents with brand new flats with water, sanitation, sewerage disposal facilities, drainage, electricity, telephones, roads and a host of other new facilities.

Under this pilot phase, 500 housing units in three 10-storey towers will be constructed on one hectare of land. Once the flats are constructed, groups of 300 to 500 owners, who now have deeds, will be guided to form a management company by buying one share for 25,000 rupees (365 dollars) each.

These companies will in turn buy electricity and water in bulk and then distribute such facilities to individual members. This will also help them to maintain the building.

Deheragoda believes that the scheme will work since it would be an incentive for participants to save up that money and be like a down-payment on a permanent home owned by them. He recalled how some of these families had got together earlier and bought a TV antennae at a cost of over 100,000 rupees (1,447 dollars) to watch cricket matches.

The STP project was originally conceived in 1994, to provide basic facilities to shanty and slum dwellers to build their own houses. But it did not work due to the level of compensation offered – 25 percent of the value of the land squatters would have vacated which was not enough to build a house with.

In 1997, Housing and Urban Development Minister Indika Gunewardene saw Colombo’s problem in a different perspective. He requested the objective to be changed to make a “sustainable city”, solving the social and environmental problems along with maximum land use.

Officials say 12 percent of the total built-up area of Colombo, is covered by slums and shanties. There are 1,506 such locations or plots, mostly on prime state land.

“It was important for us to get the collective acceptance of the settlers or under-served communities for the programme to be a success,” Deheragoda said, adding “we will not pressure them, only advise and guide them.”

Railway worker K. Susantha, whose family has lived in the slum for the past 50 years, sees the new compact township as a chance to provide a better life for his four-year-old daughter.

“Yes, the township would certainly raise our standard of living, if it is not a political stunt for the forthcoming election,” he laughs. Provincial council polls are due to be held on Apr. 6, inclusive of the Colombo district.