Sri Lanka is making progress implementing its program, Getting Everyone Back Home. The goal is to build 103,000 houses for nearly a million people left homeless by the disaster-- a massive task for a county, which normally sees some 5,000 new houses a year. As Chulie de Silva - the Bank's external affairs officer in Colombo finds, the hope is that early in the new year, everyone who lost their home in the tsunami will either be living in their new homes or at least know where their houses will be situated.
December 16, 2005 -- Umendra Janaki has a simple answer when asked about her new home.
"We have built better," Janaki says, extending her hand out to the living room as if to underline its size.
Janaki was able to rebuild her house with nearly US$7000 [LKR 700,000] she received from the Red Cross and the World Bank. Her new house in Beruwela is a far cry from the rubble left after the tsunami. "We made it bigger by using the kitchen space as well." A sewing machine occupies an important place in a corner - a sign that life is getting back to normal.
"We've just received the electricity connection and I have started taking sewing orders for bridal outfits," says Janaki, a seamstress by profession.
However, her husband N. Upatissa, a tourist guide has not found work yet. "We hope tourism will pick up and he can find a job soon," she says.
Kanthi Wirasinghe in Godagama has not been able to pick up the pieces of her life as smoothly as Umendra Janaki. Her husband, Lesley Gunasekera, their two children, and the speech impaired sister-in-law she looks after, survived the tsunami but they lost their house. Now almost a year later, they still live in a shelter they built by cutting a breadfruit tree in their garden. Their tailoring business has not resumed.
"We are tired of this temporary house. We have no piped water. We can't sleep here because of the mosquitoes," Wirasinghe says. Her family is waiting for the last installment of the housing grant to finish the new house. The delays are due to a lack of staff to carry out the construction monitoring program. The situation has been rectified by the temporary assigning of technical officers from other government departments to the Divisional Secretariats.
Wirasinghe's eyes are sad. "My husband was a well respected tailor. He sewed this blouse he sewed for me," she says. After a pause, she explains how the tsunami followed soon after his mother's death, dealing an even more severe emotional blow.
As if to prove her point, Wirasinghe brings out the rusted shell of an electric sewing machine. "He keeps asking for his mother's sewing machine. We salvaged it from the rubble of our house and put it aside by the road, but someone stole it. He walks around the village aimlessly, asking about it, and has taken to drinking with his friends."
Their three children, 15 year old twins and an 11 year old, are looked after by Kanthi's sister in Galle, where they attend school. But the burden of looking after her sister-in-law and her husband rests heavily on Wirasinghe's shoulders. "My family and my in laws are caring and very supportive, but we need to start earning our living," she says.
Finding Shelter
It's estimated there are now about 22,000 families who still do not know exactly where their permanent house will be built. But with the recent decision to relax some restrictions on building in the buffer zone - an area deemed a no go zone for re-building - it's now hoped that early in the new year, everyone who lost their homes in the tsunami will at least know exactly where their new house will be, or preferably, will already be living there.
In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, people were provided emergency accommodation in religious institutions, public buildings and in tents. The first step in the Government's housing program was to move people from that emergency accommodation to transitional shelters. The government has provided 53,221 such units of secure habitable living space, with access to adequate water, sanitation, cooking and other facilities. The intention was to enable families to resume normal household activities and to provide a platform for re-establishing livelihoods.
Tsunami Housing Reconstruction Unit
The Tsunami Housing Reconstruction Unit (THRU), created under the Ministry of Urban Development and Water, is implementing a plan to help people move from transitional shelters to permanent housing.
The Government's early decision to introduce a buffer zone of 100 meters in the South and 200 meters in the North and East made it necessary to implement two programs: a Donor built reconstruction program for affected families from the buffer zone, and a Home owner driven housing reconstruction program, for partially and fully damaged houses outside the buffer zone.
But finding suitable land to relocate people outside the buffer zone proved difficult. As of November 2005, half of 49,233 houses damaged by the tsunami were still under construction. A total of 2,164 have been completed, and 930 units have been handed over to people so they can move in.
These beneficiaries still own the property they left within the buffer zone.
The Home Owner Driven Program is jointly financed by World Bank, Asian Development Bank, the German Development Bank and the Swiss Agency for Development and Corporation.
Under this program, people receive grants of US $2500 [LKR 250,000] for a fully damaged house and $1000 [LKR 100,000] for a partially damaged house. Some 33,000 houses have already been repaired, while reconstruction of about 21,000 houses completely destroyed has started. In addition, some 380 houses have been completed and another thousand are close to completion. Donors are committed to expanding the program to new areas made available by the recent revision of the buffer zone.