Fury in the hills
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There was an eerie silence. A pall of gloom had descended on the neighbourhood and even when Aldoris, the choon-paan karaya, came down the lane, it was sans his ear-splitting music from his tuk-tuk.Stopping at our gate, he began to offer pastries to the trio who were gathered outside.
“Oyata suli-sulagin karadarayak wunada (Were you affected by the cyclone)?” asked Serapina. “Magey nadeyo godak atharamang wuna. Egollanwa bera ganna wuna. Okkama geval wala thibba badu-muttu nathiwuna (Many of my relatives were stranded and had to be rescued. They lost all their belongings),” said sad-faced Adoris. “Nuwarata asanna magey gamey godak kattiyatath karadara wuna (Many people in our village near Kandy were also affected),” noted Mabel Rasthiyadu. “Api agaya karanna oney lankawey kattiya udaw karapu widiha, asarana wela inna ayata (It was a noble effort by all Sri Lankans to help the needy who need a lot of support),” added Kussi Amma Sera.
Borrowing from a song from that popular movie ‘Sound of Music’, this time the ‘hills were alive not with music but with fury’ as the impact of Cyclone Ditwah swept across Badulla, Kandy, Kegalle, Nuwara Eliya, Ratnapura and Matale in the central hills, causing loss of life – many buried underneath landslides, which ravaged homes and buildings. More than 480 people have died as of Thursday.
On Thursday morning, I had a call from ‘Koththamalli’ Fernando, the Kokatath Thailaya (oil for many ailments) expert who has a remedy for any issue. “I say, there is a major health crisis that will emerge in the aftermath of the cyclone. I can help – offer my medicine to victims,” he said. “Victims will need more than medicine. They need housing, clothes, dry rations, school books for children and copies of important documents like birth certificates, NICs, etc.,” I said.
“This is a terrible tragedy and the government needs to move fast to help victims and restore damaged highways, homes and schools,” he said. “The recovery effort will be much bigger than the 2004 tsunami as the whole country was affected,” I said.
While there have been calls to cancel all commercial celebrations for Christmas including year-end office parties, another point of view is that such a measure would affect suppliers including musicians whose livelihoods depend on year-end festivities. Their bread-and-butter is also important in these difficult times. Maybe celebrations could be muted and part of the expenditure channelled for relief work, not altogether cancelled.
While the government prepares to count the cost of restoration which will run into billions of rupees, a heartening revelation is that billions of rupees set off for capital spending and unspent in the 2025 budget could be repurposed for relief work. Financial assistance has also been pouring in from all quarters local and foreign – through governments and individuals overseas. The government needs to be absolutely transparent in accounting for all the contributions, without facing the allegations that emerged from foreign contributions donated for the 2004 tsunami relief work.
Every government has faced ‘what if’ allegations from natural and man-made disasters in the past, be it the tsunami, the Easter Sunday attack, COVID-19 and the economic crisis. Anura Kumara Dissanayake’s administration is facing the same deluge of complaints like not responding to an allegedly-earlier warning from the Meteorological Department and appointing a new committee which the opposition says should get parliamentary approval. The government, however, responded in Parliament on Wednesday, denying that weather authorities had given such a warning, apart from the usual ‘thundershowers will be experienced’ statement.
The launch of the Sri Lanka Rebuilding Fund and the composition of its committee of senior government officials and business leaders largely from Sri Lanka’s giant corporations drew a lot of flak, with criticism about the lack of female representation on the committee. Veteran sociologist Prof. Siri Hettige asked in a social media post, why only entrepreneurs were appointed. “Does not rebuilding demand a wide range of expertise to deliberate on diverse aspects of the process,” he asked, a valid point.
Tourism, as they say, is the first casualty in any national crisis and the industry was hit just as it had begun the two peak months of the year – November and December. Sri Lanka is targeting 2.3-2.5 million arrivals this year, but might fall short of the target due to the crisis. Industry officials said 75 per cent of hotels were unscathed, while tourist sites including national parks and Sigiriya have been opened for visits.
Tourism authorities were blamed for issuing a statement on November 28 saying Sri Lanka remains safe and open for travel and tourism, when hotels in the central hills – one group of 35 tourists spent the night in a hotel bar as their rooms were flooded – were affected. Tourists were also stranded as communication was badly affected and access roads were impassable. Some tourists from Nuwara Eliya were air-lifted to Colombo.
Furthermore, the ‘safe for travel’ advisory came when social media posts were filled with the tragedy and the grave situation which many would-be travellers had access to. The worst affected were the FITs (Free Independent Travellers) who arrange their own itinerary and find their own transport. They were stuck, unlike group travellers whose local travel agencies stepped in to assist these groups.
Tourism, while being the first victim in the crisis, can be the first to recover too and help not only generate valuable foreign exchange but also communities who depend on the industry for survival.
With more than a million people affected, the country’s economy has taken a massive hit, as consumer spending will fall – particularly during a normally busy December-January period – and hints that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which computes the total cost of goods and services in the country, would be dented. The government is battling the crisis with its back to the wall amidst a deluge of criticism from the opposition, a normal practice as seen in the past. The naysayers are piling up to find fault in the system. Oh! Why don’t we have statesmen who will rise above politics and join in the relief work without any reservation?
There have been spur-of-the-moment calls for a readjustment of the IMF relief package and summoning a donor conference. While counting the cost is underway, just as we speak, the government also needs to come up with a ballpark figure and whether financial assistance from international donors and wellwishers, along with the balance funds accrued from the 2025 budget, is sufficient to meet the cost of recovery.
Transparency is the key and accountability paramount. The ministers seem to be functioning at sixes or sevens. While the President stressed that the state of emergency won’t be used to harass opponents but strictly for relief work, a junior minister went on record ordering the police to use emergency powers to tackle social media posts allegedly slandering the government.
Finally, it’s incumbent on the government to engage with all sections of the community in the repair agenda and themselves rise above politics to see the country through one of its worst natural disasters in history.
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