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SRI LANKA: Tsunami Battered Island Licks Its Wounds

Amantha Perera

COLOMBO, Jan 2 2005 (IPS) - One of the loudest weekends of the year was transformed into the quietest in Sri Lanka, a week after a deadly Indian Ocean tsunami killed at least 30,000 people in the country.

One of the loudest weekends of the year was transformed into the quietest in Sri Lanka, a week after a deadly Indian Ocean tsunami killed at least 30,000 people in the country.

New Year’s Eve is always the liveliest party for the country’s 20 million people. Usually loud and bright fireworks would greet the New Year and festivities would continue into the early hours of Jan. 1.

But this time, the streets of the capital were deserted and instead of exploding crackers, the chantings of Buddhist priests – beamed over national television – greeted 2005. Earlier, a multi-party prayer service was held in the capital attended by President Chandrika Kumaratunga, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapakse and Opposition Leader Ranil Wickremasinghe.

According to official figures released over the weekend, the death toll from the Dec. 26 tsunami reached 29,729. But the number of dead is rising by the hour and is expected to cross the 30,000 mark.

Figures released by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) indicate that at least 4,000 people may have died in areas under the control of the rebels in the north and east. In the entire north and east of the country, the Tigers added, 18,000 people have perished.

Last Sunday, 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.

Whole communities in Sri Lanka have been wiped out by the killer waves and relief agencies are preparing themselves for the worst.

”We will need to feed over 700,000 in Sri Lanka,” Jan Egeland, the U.N.’s emergency relief coordinator told the media on Saturday.

But flash floods over the weekend have complicated relief efforts and slowed aid to thousands of marooned survivors.

Inundated roads are preventing relief convoys from reaching the eastern Amapara and Batticaloa districts, where so far more than 12,000 deaths have been recorded. Relief workers also fear, if they don’t reach the areas fast enough, an outbreak of water-borne diseases at overcrowded shelters.

”There is a massive risk of diseases spreading in these camps,” Dr. Uditha Herath of the Government Medical Officers’ Association told IPS. The GMOA has deployed more than 1000 doctors all over the island including to the north and east.

Herath said the camps, for internally displaced people, had very poor sanitary facilities and there is a danger that drinking water might be contaminated with human faeces and sewage.

”Also, people are bringing cooked food to the camps. In open air with so many people it can go bad pretty quickly,” he added.

The GMOA has requested private as well other relief workers to set up community centres close to disaster areas and prepare hot food as the need arises.

The government also agreed that the spread of disease was a major threat in the immediate post-disaster period.

”Beside the aid flow, we need experts to curb diseases,” Minister Susil Premjayantha said last week.

But GMOA’s Herath said that though medicine and equipment had been coming into the country from donors, its distribution was slow.

While international response to the needs in Sri Lanka has been fast, criticism persisted that relief was not reaching those in dire need.

A T Ariyarathne the head of the local charity organisation Sarvodya said in northern Jaffna that he did not see substantial relief reaching the area even six days after the tsunami. However, the World Food Programme had transported around 95 tonnes of food to the Pallai refugee camp located at the southern corner of the peninsula, under rebel Tiger control.

UNICEF said last week that 15 emergency medical kits were cleared and handed over to the Ministry of Health. They would allow 15 hospitals to provide assistance to 150,000 patients for three months.

Also, the United Nations Population Fund or UNFPA has allocated 250,000 U.S. dollars for health and food supplies. To date, the U.N. refugee agency, UNHCR, has released relief items totalling 380,000 U.S. dollars.

”We are here to offer total solidarity to the people of Sri Lanka,” Miguel Brmeo, a member of the U.N. Disaster Assessment Coordination Team said last week in Tiger controlled Kilinochchi.

In the meantime there is renewed hope, at least, within the government that the natural disaster might help thaw icy relations between Colombo and the Tigers.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in clashes between Tiger rebels and government forces over the last three decades.

President Kumaratunga in her New Year message said that tragedy should allow the Tigers and the government to work closely. However, the LTTE has so far refused to join in on the task force set up by her to oversee relief work. Talks between the government and the Tigers have been stalled since April 2003, though a ceasefire has been in place since December 2001.

The Tigers who made their own appeal to the international community for help have deployed around 10,000 of their cadres in the relief work.

But peace talks aside, Sri Lanka, now, faces a mammoth uphill task in trying to rebuild its battered economy and coastal infrastructure.

Early estimates suggest that reconstruction of infrastructure would cost at least one billion U.S. dollars.

The tourism industry, one of the mainstays of the economy, has been severely damaged.

Around 40 percent of hotels on the island have been destroyed, most of them in the popular tourist belt on the southern coast. Experts say it will take at least 10 years for the industry to recover.

Tourism revenue during the first 10 months of 2004 was 308 million U.S. dollars, an increase of 12 percent compared to 2003.

Agriculture and fisheries industries, too, are likely to perform below par due to the tsunami damage.

Ampara, which accounts for 20 percent of the country’s paddy harvest is the severest hit district. A string of offshore fish hatcheries have been destroyed along the coast and an initial assessment of the damage by the Ceylon Fisheries Corporation put the figure at 200 million U.S. dollars.

The reconstruction of these hatcheries would take as long as one and half years to complete, according to the chairman Ceylon Fisheries Harbour Corporation, Tilakasiri Gallage.