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The gnats and the sledgehammer
Sunday, 20 July 2008 - 11:43 AM SL Time
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The SAARC leaders who will be here next week, we are sure, will not really care whether poor people continue to live in unauthorized dwellings in Colombo s Kompannaveediya area while they engage in their Summitry at the BMICH and elsewhere. But there are pundits, clothed in brief authority, who think otherwise and the last few days have seen the denizen of Station Passage, Glennie Passage and Garden Stuart Street seeing their humble homes demolished by backhoes and other steel monsters in the name of the security of the visiting dignitaries. The Urban Development Authority, under the stewardship of the son of a man widely recognized as a working class leader, has been doing the unpleasant honours of demolishing these cramped structures into which whole families are crowded. Minister Dinesh Gunawardene is not yet on record expressing his views on what his minions are doing. He will, no doubt, do his best to find these unfortunate people alternative accommodation.
We Lankans like to put up a show for our guests, especially VIP guests. This goes not only for individuals but also for institutions and the State itself. If a daughter of a family, rich or poor, is getting married, the house will be painted and the bride decked up if need be in borrowed feathers. If the minister is visiting, officials would rush hither and thither doing patchwork repairs on rutted and pot-holed roads residents of a neighbourhood have long suffered. Now that the leaders of the SAARC countries will be here for a Summit which in the first place was not our turn to host, we see a frenzy of activity around Colombo. Long neglected roads are being done up, overgrown tree pruned and all manner of things that should have been done long ago, SAARC or no SAARC, are being hurriedly attended to. Such work would not have become urgent if the responsible authorities were serious about fulfilling the duties they are paid to do. Thanks to SAARC, of course, a lot of money which the Sri Lankan State is chronically short of has been magically provided. We have still not had an explanation on how that miracle was accomplished, with or without recourse to the printing press.
Our mind at this time, like that of Media and Information Minister Anura Priyadharshana Yapa, goes back to the Non-Aligned Summit of 1976 hosted by Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike who was unceremoniously kicked out by the electorate one year later. We had a similar spurt of activity of road repairs and painting with the old St. John s Fish Market in Kochikade demolished overnight. The vendors had gone home after work one evening and returned next morning to find the market gone! Somebody was of the view that that the Non-Aligned leaders must not drive past such an unsightly building. No matter the ratepayers of Colombo were made for decades before to brave its stink, grime and slush to buy a malu kuriya or pound or two of fish for their miris hodda. St. John s was also the country s main wholesale fish market. But the Summit was the incentive to knock down the old market and build a new one elsewhere. The airport road too was widened for that occasion. If we did not have the 1976 tamasha, which has brought us great benefits according to Yapa, the then thoroughly inadequate road now to be converted into a highway, would have remained as it was for many moons to come. So the boru shoke this impoverished nation habitually indulges in has its uses although whether we get the maximum possible mileage for our tax rupees out of hurriedly done patchwork is another question.
The houses that have been broken down were certainly unauthorized and built on state land by people who had no title to such property. But the responsible authorities permitted not just their construction but their consolidation. Water and electricity have been connected. The Colombo Municipal Council, the victims say, even made rating assessments! The occupants of these houses were not Johnnies come lately, some claiming to have lived there for 30 and 40 years. They had sunk roots in that neighbourhood, got their children into schools in the vicinity and had probably been even buying and selling houses there. Suddenly with security considerations as a result of the SAARC meeting coming up, the occupants were asked to go. The land on which the houses were built were under the purview of the Defence Ministry, probably on account of their proximity to military installations, and the Railway Department. The victims say that even an assurance that they could stay where they were till July 23 had not been honoured.
This is a perennial problem. If the Sri Lanka Railway wishes to ensure that all its reservations are cleared, literally thousands who have built shacks along railway lines will have to be evicted. A drive along the (relatively) new bypass or Marine Drive from Moratuwa to Panadura will demonstrate the extent of the problem. People first build shanties on land on which they squat. Then they make the structures more permanent. Politicians seeking votes extend patronage in various ways and in the fullness of time various habitations take root in places where they have no business to be. When the authorities move heavy handedly on such communities either for good reason or bad, the kind of misery evident in Kompannaveediya last week is the result. The reality is that while those evicted are wrong-doers, if they have long been permitted to do what they have done, then the State and its various agencies are complicit. Out in the countryside when villagers encroach on state land and cultivate crops, such encroachments are often regularized by the authorities as it is recognized that these farmers really deserve the land they till.
While the line, admittedly, has to be drawn somewhere, it has to be drawn in time. Also those responsible must act in a humane manner. Having unauthorized structures cheek by jowl with military installations at a time a terrorist insurgency is very much a fact of life may be undesirable. But do we need a SAARC Summit to see the light?
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Sam007
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 245
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 20 Jul 2008 12:01:17 GMT Report for Abuse
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| SARC or No SARC clearing up will happen. But these poor people will have to be given new land or a house, to go on with their lives. There is no doubt there is so much of corruption taking place in these shanties, it's requires and need attention to curb them than demolishing everything over night leaving no room for any one to even make an effort to move to some other place. |
gchula99
Joined: Oct 2006
Posts: 866
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 21 Jul 2008 02:04:49 GMT Report for Abuse
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Our population is increasing at incredible rate daily. We have only about 66,000 Sq.Kilometers to live. Every family leave at least 3-4 off shoots to live. Go to Maligawatta, Wanathamulla Dematagoda Maradana you can see people living in already fully packed rooms.
Main root of many problems is this unbearable population. Two things are possible to settle the issue.
1) Birth control.
2) Invade sea.
It is no point of chasing these people from those lands, one day they will come back in different face.
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justman
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 1115
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 22 Jul 2008 15:19:51 GMT Report for Abuse
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| It's a pity that our horrible none caring selfish politicians use events like Tsunami(with the 100 or 200 meter limit),National security(war) and now SAARC to suppress the people that they are suppose to help but these politic ans exploit them to get rich.Now their goons are harassing house owners,with false deeds grab their property by force,using thuggery. |
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