PASSIKUDAH – It was a great conference; the accolades said it, there were many warm handshakes and gentle pats of ‘well done’ on the backs of organisers. Delegates were ‘wowed’ by the beauty of Sri Lanka but where were the people? The need for economic inequalities, the need for proper training of village youth in the [...]

The Sunday Times Sri Lanka

Where are the people?

View(s):

PASSIKUDAH – It was a great conference; the accolades said it, there were many warm handshakes and gentle pats of ‘well done’ on the backs of organisers. Delegates were ‘wowed’ by the beauty of Sri Lanka but where were the people? The need for economic inequalities, the need for proper training of village youth in the hospitality business and management, the need for building new schools and provision of computer labs were stressed but where were the people? Sitting through two days of discussion at the Amaya Beach Resort in Passikudah, nearly 300 km east of Colombo in the Batticaloa district, at a United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO)-organised international conference titled “Tourism: a Catalyst for Development, Peace and Reconciliation”, one got the feeling that the missing link at this important meeting was the people from nearby villages and the fishing community.

While all the hardware (material) and software (people) came from Colombo and the rest of the world, few residents were aware of such a conference, a contradiction in terms of the messages that came out from the meeting – ‘connect with the people’, ‘tourism is a great way to bridge the divide’, ‘tourism quickly improves the economy in post-conflict situations’. Passikudah is a fishing village and like many communities in the East was severely affected by the war and the 2004 tsunami. There are a large number of war widows and women-headed households. Activist Ruki Fernando, who attended the conference, wrote in a recent article to coincide with the conference that before the advent of large hotels owned and staffed primarily by outsiders, many local people had tried to develop their economy through small scale guest houses. He says fisherfolk and local guest house owners and staff were unaware about the event, were not consulted or invited.

“Those seriously affected by the three decade old war have been totally left out at a conference claiming to discuss peace, reconciliation and development,” he wrote. While some of the points raised were challenged and contested by ‘outside’ hoteliers in Passikudah with one hotelier saying they have provided a lot of support to local communities (buying large quantities of fish for example), much of what Ruki says is true.
And, there were lessons from the conference on how to engage the local community in tourism. For example Cambodia, which also recovered from a bloody conflict that killed over a million people, first invited Cambodians living abroad in exile, as permanent residents and owning foreign passports, to visit the country. They were invited to visit without entry visas (since they own foreign passports) and see their homeland recovering from war and enjoying the fruits of peace.

“That is the first thing we did before promoting the country to foreign visitors,” explained a Cambodian government representative at the conference. Similarly for a region (Passikudah and Batticaloa) recovering from conflict, the people of the region should have been actively involved in the conference, their presence should have been felt across the small conference hall and the hotels that delegates stayed in. Unfortunately most of the staff of the Passikudah hotels too were ‘outsiders’ except for a few trainees. Delegates including UNTWO Secretary General Taleb Rifai were enchanted by the very imaginatively-organised train ride from the Katunayake airport to Valachchenai railway station, about 8 km away from Passikudah, as many villagers and happy, laughing children waved merrily as the train sped past towns and villages.

The train ride was the “talk of the town’ and rightly so, with delegates concurring, that Sri Lanka’s biggest tourism asset is its ‘software’ – smiling, warm and friendly people. One delegate spoke of how she and her friends were filled to the brim with food and drink when their vehicle was stopped on-and-off (while returning to Colombo from Galle during an earlier trip to Sri Lanka) by friendly people organizing ‘dansalas’ during a festival. “It was a wonderful feeling and expressed how generous Sri Lankans are,” she said. That generosity, warmth and ebullience is Sri Lanka’s strength and the greatest asset for tourism. Instead of only pontificating about this from conference halls, brochures and overseas trade fairs, there should have been people’s participation at the conference.

There were many ways of doing it … creating a small village outside the conference hall, involving local artisans and crafts-persons through stalls to display their products, providing local Eastern cuisine (apart from the many sweetmeats and delicacies at lunch and dinner-time which reflected our Portuguese, British and Dutch heritage), and most of all a greater engagement during conference discussions – panel discussions with local elders and community leaders on bridging the divide, etc. A good case study of living, breathing and engaging with local communities is the Kandalama Hotel development. At the very beginning, the hotel owners were resisted by villagers and the local Buddhist monk alleging that the development would ruin the area, create a scarcity of water (being pumped from the nearby lake) and was culturally unsuitable.

The conflict grew with sometimes, violent protests until the owners did something smart (which should have been done in the first place). A few, down-to-earth hotel officials began living in the village, eating the same food, breathing the same air and discussing the benefits of the development. That established trust and the message that the hotel will provide jobs to village youth, buy most of the produce from the village thereby economically uplifting the community and ensure the least disruption to the environment and nearby surroundings. Kandalama Hotel now has received many accolades but its biggest asset is the positive endorsement from the village. The Passikudah tourism model (too late to change it now) distances the people from visitors.

The string of hotels are built on one side with huge boundary walls while on the other side there is barren land. There are only 1-2 shops or boutiques to provide any evidence of a bustling township which has benefited by this development. There were no 3- wheelers, taxis, restaurants, grocery stores or small pubs to reflect community engagement. It was like visiting a tourism island in the Maldives where the only residents are foreign visitors and staff! This critique is not a reflection on how the conference was organized, It was professionally done and kudos to the team at Sri Lankan Tourism, But that’s the hardware. Missing was the software – the hearts and minds, the people mingling with delegates and in a conference that spoke of bridging the great divide (from good to great; from peace to prosperity), this was a crucial, a very crucial missing link.

Without people, how can you bridge communities, how do you reach out to the disadvantaged apart from lofty statements, elaborate presentations and colourful dances? Hotelier Hiran Cooray’s words expressed how development should take place. “My father (Herbert Cooray who founded Jetwing) told me not to even toot the horn while I was learning to drive in Negombo … out of respect for the local people.” Such was the respect given by pioneers in the tourism sector and their ways of engaging the local community. That respect appeared to be missing in the conference but with this slated to be an annual event, local community engagement would hopefully be more visible next year.

Advertising Rates

Please contact the advertising office on 011 - 2479521 for the advertising rates.