By Patrick Fuller in Sri Lanka
The sight of Mohadin Musammil and his team of Red Cross volunteers is a reassuring reminder to the people of Pottuvil in Eastern Sri Lanka that their plight has not been forgotten. Every day the volunteers can be seen, moving from house to house with their buckets and ladders in this tsunami-ravaged region. Their job is to check the water quality and if necessary, clean the wells along Pottuvil's coastal belt.
After the tsunami, Musammil found work with the Swedish Red Cross Water and Sanitation Emergency Response Unit who arrived in Pottuvil in February. Now, almost 10 months on, he is heading up the Sri Lanka Red Cross well cleaning programme in the area.
Musammil lives in the village of Jalaldeen Square, a small community that was hit hard by the tsunami. Once a tight knit community, most of Jalaldeen's surviving residents have abandoned the ruins of their former homes. Musammil's family are among the few that remain. They live in a temporary wooden shelter built by a local NGO alongside the ruins of their former home.
As well as caring for his five children, Musammil now looks after his sister in law's three daughters, after their mother perished in the wave. "It is a big responsibility, but I'm one of the lucky ones here, I have work," he explains ruefully.
Katarina Ortfelt, a water and sanitation delegate for Ampara District with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, coordinates the work of Musammil's team.
"Most families used to depend entirely on their own private wells for water, but since the tsunami, salinity levels in the ground water have increased dramatically and the water is only good for washing," she explains.
Initially the focus for the Red Cross was on chlorinating and cleaning out debris from the wells left behind by the tsunami. Now, every three months they visit each well in the area to check on salinity levels.
"In the past eight months we have cleaned more than 1,300 wells. In that time we have seen salinity levels drop by 50% but the water still isn't fit to drink," says Musammil. "We need the monsoon rains to come and flush out the salt". The villagers of Jalaldeen who chose to remain now depend on fresh water tanked in by the Red Cross to a number of communal water tanks and collapsible bladders dotted around the village."
The water situation in this arid region has always been precarious. Beset by drought for three months of the year, almost half the wells in the area go dry. But the combination of drought, damaged infrastructure, contaminated wells and displaced populations has created a huge need for clean drinking water that the humanitarian community is to addressing collectively.
The Red Cross has been assisting on a number of different levels which include large-scale water purification and distribution, well cleaning, latrine construction and rehabilitation and the upgrading of water supply networks. Four specialist water units run by the German, French and Italian Red Cross Societies are currently producing and distributing up to three million litres of drinking water per week to some 50,000 people in Ampara and Batticaloa districts in the east of the country.
"Because of the widespread needs, this is one of the most broad-ranging and ambitious water and sanitation programmes that the Red Cross has ever undertaken in a single country," explains Fidel Pena, the Federation's Water and Sanitation Coordinator. "At one end of the scale we are working at a household level, providing water filters and cleaning wells. At the other end we are supporting multi-million dollar water supply infrastructure projects".
Two kilometres inland most of the surviving residents who have moved away from the damaged coastline are now living in temporary camps erected either side of the road. The camps, which were built in scrubland, now resemble small villages complete with grocery shops, vegetable gardens and local bus services. Every morning a Red Cross bowser arrives to replenish the 10,000 litre water tank at the roadside. Women from the camp quickly crowd around the tap stands with their buckets to collect the fresh water. This is just one of the many stops made by the bowser which returns every few hours to refill at the water production plant run by the German Red Cross near Tirrukkovil.
Sited on the edge of a picturesque lake, the production plant is pumping water from the lake into 70,000 litre holding tanks where it is treated with aluminium sulphate. After a couple of hours the water settles and is pumped into two other storage tanks where it is chlorinated and pumped into the waiting bowsers. Gottfried Stauffer, a water and sanitation delegate with the German Red Cross manages the plant.
"Every day we are supplying water to about 1,200 families in six temporary camps in the area. Other organisations also send their bowsers, so, on average, we are sending out between 120,000 to 150,000 litres every day," he says.
Since December, the Red Cross has been trucking water to thousands of people across Sri Lanka's nine tsunami-affected districts. "This is a need that will continue until the water quality in community wells improves and people in temporary shelters move into permanent homes where they have a reliable water supply", explains Fidel Pena. As part of the long term solution, The Red Cross Red Crescent Movement will be helping to restore water and sanitation infrastructure to its pre-tsunami status whilst also upgrading and constructing some new facilities.
On 23 August 2005, the Federation, together with the Sri Lanka Red Cross, signed an agreement with the Government of Sri Lanka to construct water supply infrastructure in Ampara, Galle, Hambantota, Jaffna, and Matara districts, at a cost of some 38 million Swiss Francs (US$30 million, €24.7 million). The first scheme to be implemented under this agreement is a large-scale water and sanitation project in Galle district which will benefit more than 5,500 people and will employ more than 60 Water Board staff for up to two years.
These large-scale infrastructure projects will reach beyond communities directly affected by the tsunami. It is important that inequity is not created between the tsunami-affected coastline and adjacent areas which may also have high levels of vulnerability. It won't be long before work starts on a project to upgrade Pottuvil's water supply network, but for now the work of volunteers like Musammil remains essential.