Those who are trying to understand this government’s approach to the current IDPs tragedy will find the lessons from our recent past very instructive. Reconstruction and Development Agency (RADA- the main government authority overseeing the efforts to rebuild after the tsunami) officials said that it was scaling down its tsunami recovery related operations and most of the departments would be closed by the end of the year. Great! Our hard work and the $2.1 billion international financial support (to cover a damage of $1.5 billion- Source: Tsunami Evaluation Coalition Report, 2006) must have sorted out the pressing reconstruction needs of all those affected. Now that we have sorted that one out within 30 months after the waves struck, we are ready to take on the 300,000 plus war-affected.
Not so fast.
It is true that we have accomplished a lot in the South. According to a recent report from ActionAid “Voices from the Field” 86% of the damages houses in the South have been rebuilt. However, for the North the figure stands at 12% and for the East it is 26%.
Similar pattern can be seen in improving livelihoods of the tsunami affected. The Geneva-based ILO found that at the national level 90 percent of the affected families had returned to work, though income levels remained lower than pre-tsunami capacities. However, only 55 percent of the tsunami-affected families in Jaffna were relying on employment income and 73 percent were earning less than 20 dollars per month (SL Rs 2000).
Sure, there are understandable reasons why this disparity exists. The resumption of conflict posed access issues – on top of the security situation, the LTTE, the Government and the Military instituted number of obstacles that prevented free flow of materials to those affected in the North and East. The expansion of high security zones and the closure of supply routes are significant contributing factors to this situation. Then there are some predictable reasons as well. For instance, according to RADA, the Ampara district (which sustained 24 percent of the overall tsunami housing damage) received only 14 percent or $58 million of total pledges – while the Hambantota district received almost four times its requirement of $11.4 million. But let us not get distracted by the reasons for this disparity. What is clear is that reconstruction has barely begun in the North and East where 60% of the damage occurred.
The key question here is: Why is the government winding down the operations of the RADA? Either the government must have lost faith in the RADA and is preparing to institute alternate mechanisms. Or more plausibly, at the risk of getting 20 years behind the bar or worse, let me say this: GOSL may not be assigning the same value to resuscitating the livelihoods of citizens in the North and East. That does not bode well for those war-affected citizens languishing in the IDP camps and elsewhere in the North and East.
Sources:
IPS News http://ipsnews.net/
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