Housing and livelihoods are the two biggest issues facing Sri Lanka as it rebuilds following the devastating Boxing Day tsunami.
When it comes to rebuilding houses, the Sri Lankan government has made painfully slow progress. The process is being hampered by bureaucracy and the government's newly enforced buffer zone, which forbids any houses being rebuilt within 100m of the coast in a bid to reduce the damage that would result from any similar future event. Work has slowed so much that hardly any of the 81,000 homes that are needed have been built.
Despite this, the government remains steadfast in its policy to impose the 100m buffer zone and believes that, in 18 months' time, it will have reached its housing target.
Gaminie Jayasekara, chief administrative officer for the Matara district, which is about an hour east of the southern city of Galle, admits that the government has two big hurdles to cross - housing, and getting people off support and back into work.
Jayasekara, who nearly lost his own life when he was caught up in the giant waves as he visited the market in Matara on Boxing Day, lost his son in the tragedy. He tells me that, despite his personal hurt, working to help his country was a bigger obligation than the one he has to his son.
In the Matara district, 400 families still have to be housed. According to official figures, the number of emergency camps has been reduced from 69 to 22. However, some 68 sites have been identified for additional housing beyond the 100m zone, and some land has already been acquired.
Jayasekara explains: "We are trying to get people rehoused within a year, but there have been some problems, so 18 months is more realistic. We can't get hold of all the materials we need, particularly sand, and there is a shortage of skilled workers, such as carpenters and builders."
Another Matara official tells me that finding sites to which roads and sanitation infrastructure can be taken is also holding things up. In the meantime, the solution is to build temporary wooden houses.
Roshan Lyman, a European Commission economic and trade adviser to Sri Lanka, says this policy is crazy. "It's a waste of money and just slows the rebuilding of permanent housing," he says.
He adds that, in his view, it is the 100m building restriction that is creating the biggest obstacle. "It doesn't make any sense," he says. "You can't change a culture overnight, and the fishermen have always lived near the sea to be near their boats. A more intelligent way of defining the buffer zone would have been to build where the land is above 50m. In some areas, like the east, the tsunami travelled three kilometres inland, so the 100m zone is ineffective."
He points out that the houses that survived were the ones that were stronger and more expensively built, and argues that this is a more important factor.
What he finds frustrating is that the funds are there to build all the 81,000 houses required. Sri Lanka has been pledged US$3b (£1.67b), including debt relief, but some of this has been withheld because the government refuses to recognise the LTTE, the political wing of the Tamil Tigers, the separatist group which controls much of the north of the country - an area also badly hit by the tsunami.
Lyman explains that the EU pledged €100m (£68m) for housing and road building, but the funds could not be released until the government signed a co-operation agreement with the rebels to allow the aid to be distributed equally throughout the country. The government has now signed the agreement, but Lyman is scathing of its performance. "Seven months later," he says, "not much has been achieved. The relief agencies and private initiatives have been working away, but the government has not done much."
The country is facing other social problems, too. Many fishermen, for instance, have been left marooned on shore, with neither boats nor homes. Unable to fish, many are trying to find work in the rice paddies or are living on government aid. Unfortunately, this has led to a rise in alcohol abuse among many men, whose lives have been left in disarray.
On the drive from Hambantota, in the south-east corner of Sri Lanka, we arrive at the first of the camps, home to the people from the Kirinda and Andaragasyaya fishing villages. Here, the camps comprise wooden temporary houses, which are luxurious compared with the squalid tents at the camps I visited earlier near Galle.
Of the 490 people in the 100 houses at the camp, nearly 200 are fishermen. Sharif, a 35-year-old fisherman, tells us he wants to go back to the sea to fish, but in this area they lost 181 boats, together with nets and 26 fish-marketing centres. Throughout Sri Lanka, about 80% of the fishing fleet was destroyed, and 13,500 of the 31,000 dead were fishermen.
Unicef temporary support worker Janaka Wikramsinghe says there is a fear that the tsunami will come again, and this is prompting some men to turn to drink. He explains: "They feel there is no point trying to put life back on track, and instead choose to drown all their sorrows in liquor."
Other social problems have also worsened since the tsunami. Child abuse, for example, is not a new problem but there is a higher incidence of it being reported now that the government has set up the National Child Protection Agency with the help of Unicef. Cases of malnutrition have also increased. In the past, this problem was confined to the poorer tea-plantation areas, but recently Unicef has seen malnutrition emerge in the coastal regions.
Geoff Keele, communications officer for Unicef in Sri Lanka, says: "Up to one-quarter of all children have nutritional problems, and that means long-term problems. It is not through a lack of access to food, but the right nutrients."
To tackle this, Unicef is trying to educate families, particularly those in the camps, about cooking and preparing vegetables and ensuring they get enough vitamins in their diets.
The charity has also funded the installation of a salt iodisation plant at Hambantota. This is an effective way to get iodine into people's diets and protect them against the debilitating effects of goitre, a condition which affects 20-35% of Sri Lankan children and causes learning difficulties.
Other initiatives include educating and training mothers to breastfeed their children instead of using milk powder, which can cause health problems - particularly if the bottles are not sterilised.
"We are working with the World Food Programme on a nutritional surveillance map of the whole country," Keele says. "We are now doing the second survey, which should enable us to see if we have made any progress. The tsunami and the donor generosity that followed have given us a chance to turn tragedy into opportunity."
One example of this is a nutritional management system, which had struggled to find funding before the tsunami hit. But now, thanks to donor generosity, Unicef is able to start this in the coastal areas. The government will roll this out across the whole country when it has additional funding on-stream.
Eight months after the tsunami, there is still much to be done in Sri Lanka to piece together people's shattered lives and their communities. The progress might have been dreadfully slow at times, but there have also been huge successes, particularly in the immediate aftermath, when fundraising initiatives such as Unichef played a big part. There's still much hard work left to do, but at least organisations such as Unicef will be there, helping the country to forge a new future full of opportunity for all its citizens.
Funding – what’s the plan for the next six months?
Immediately after the tsunami, Philip Howard, chefproprietor of London’s two-Michelin-starred restaurant the Square, dreamt up a fundraising initiative. He teamed up with Caterer, restaurant guide and website Square Meal and Unicef, the UN charity for children, in a fundraising effort that became known as Unichef.
Howard’s plan was for restaurants, including those in pubs and hotels, to donate a percentage of their takings on 7 February this year. More than 200 restaurants, group restaurants, hotels, pubs, contract caterers and even a tearoom signed up to Unichef, raising more than £330,000.
This stunning achievement has helped the charity not only to offer vital assistance in the immediate aftermath, but also to fund long-term projects and ensure a better future for the children who survived the tsunami.
The tsunami claimed at least 31,000 lives in Sri Lanka and left more than half-a-million homeless. It struck half the country’s 28 districts, damaging houses, cutting off water supplies, contaminating drinking water and destroying sanitation facilities.
Unicef has been operating in Sri Lanka for more than 30 years and was able to respond immediately to the tragedy, helping to provide clean and safe water, and emergency shelters, and to supply schools with text books, furniture and a safe environment for children.
Six months on, the charity is moving its focus to more long-term projects, including:
- Working with the Ministry of Education to reconstruct more than 19 schools – construction to be completed by December 2005
- Funding teacher training and teacher support groups to help better identify and understand stress-related behaviour in children
- Working with the World Food Programme, the UN food charity, on a midday-meal feeding programme
- Raising school attendance by reaching out to parents
- Providing 196 vaccine carriers, 250 thermometers, 72 fridges and 10 generators
- Providing safe drinking water, 20 litres per person per day, for about 48,000 people in 124 camps
- Conducting hygiene promotion in camps, communities and schools
- Working with parents to promote adoption, fostering and sponsorship of orphans.
Is tourism recovering?
Tourism is one of the biggest industries in Sri Lanka, and one of the most important sources of revenue in an economy that used to rely heavily on export income from tea.
What makes the growth of the hotel and tourism industry remarkable is that it has happened despite the running civil war between the ruling Singhalese and the disaffected Tamils in the north.
Fighting started in 1983 and continues to this day – the recent assassination of Sri Lankan foreign minister Lakshman Kadirgamar on 12 August was blamed on the Tamil Tigers – and is evidence of the serious tensions in the country.
Nevertheless, Sri Lanka has promoted itself worldwide and the idyllic nature of the island has made it a favourite with tourists from Europe, the USA and other parts of Asia. It has wonderful variety, ranging from stunning beaches to breathtaking scenery in the central uplands.
Official figures from the Sri Lankan Tourist Board show that income from tourism grew from $132m in 1990 to a provisional $340m in 2003.
The trend has continued but, just as things seemed to be going really well, the tsunami struck and wrecked the confidence of both the industry and potential holiday-makers.
It also swept away a number of coastal hotel properties. Sri Lanka has 214 hotels with 14,000 bedrooms; of these, 84 are located on the coast and 48 were damaged by the tsunami.
Despite the devastation, the director-general of the Sri Lanka Tourist Board, Selvam Kalaiselvam, reckons most were back in operation within two weeks. Only seven properties were totally destroyed and won’t be reopened for two years. One of these, the Triton in Trincomalee on the east coast, would have been closed for a planned refurbishment anyway and is set to reopen in January.
Kalaiselvam adds that the government has helped to accelerate the rebuilding process by allowing hotels to buy repair materials tax-free.
So far, 31 damaged hotels have been repaired and are fully operational, and a further 10 are being totally refurbished before Sri Lanka’s main tourist season begins in November.
Although most hotels are operational, consumer confidence has been rocked and visitor numbers are well down. The tourist board’s figures show a 30% fall in visitor numbers in January and February, although numbers picked up in March and April. In fact, there was a 31% increase in overseas visitors in March, with arrivals at 50,418, and up again in April, by 37.8%.
But these figures could be misleading. The first four months of the year, for instance, show a 3% increase in visitor numbers, but these statistics include business travellers and the large numbers of people working for non-government organisations (NGOs).
Boost to trade
Certainly, the presence of the NGOs has helped boost hotel trade, particularly in the capital city of Colombo, where the Colombo Plaza and the Trans Asia hotels are witnessing occupancy rates at the same 70%-80% levels as last year. The Plaza has been one of the favoured hotels of NGO workers.
Elsewhere, though, occupancy has been disappointing. Wansa Hettiarachchi, a hotel operator and travel agent with Crystal Villas and Crystal Holidays, says that the peak of the season in January and February was a non-event. “It totally collapsed,” he says. “Nothing can prepare you for this devastation, and only the NGOs came here.”
In his view, the future is bleak. “It looks pretty gloomy for the next few months,” he says. “We really need a major awareness programme for the international media.”
Hettiarachchi’s small beachside boutique villa complex in Weligama was hit by the tsunami, which flooded the whole property, ruining electrics and furnishings. Some damage was done to the villas and the main building, but it has been the subsequent downturn in trade that has been hardest to bear. His eight staff have been pared down to just one.
Other hotels have also noticed a downturn in business. Sanath Ukwatte, chairman of the Mount Lavinia hotel just outside Colombo, says occupancy has been running at 60-70%. The company’s other property, in Bentota, had more damage, with the whole ground storey of the hotel ruined. Ukwatte is hoping it will be ready to reopen as the Robinson’s Club in November, the beginning of the season.
He accepts that the tourist board is doing its best, given its financial constraints. “People want quick results,” he says, “but tourism campaigns can take time. Hopefully, bookings will improve for November.”
Other five-star resort hotels seem to be recovering visitors, particularly from Germany and France. The Eden Resort & Spa, in Beruwela on the south coast, reports that occupancy is improving despite a complete fall-off in business – down to 20% in February and 40% in March and April. Front-office manager Rumzi Sali says predictions for December are good, and the resort expects to be packed through to next April.
The hotel is still finishing repairs following the tsunami, which swept through the whole complex, destroying the ground-floor restaurant. Sali says the resort reopened on 1 February, even while repairs continued.
The tourist board is aware that one of the main obstacles preventing tourists travelling to Sri Lanka is the fear of another tsunami and the prospect of seeing a country still littered with debris. Both problems, Kalaiselvam says, are being tackled and he believes a consumer advertising campaign this summer will help persuade visitors to return.
The official view is that Sri Lanka is open for business now, and with the tourist industry such a vital part of the economy, a swift return of visitors will help the whole country get back on its feet.
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