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| Sunday, 17 February 2002 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Poverty-ridden Negombo fishermen’s dare-devil attempt to reach Italy was foiled by fate The lure of the Lira by Jayanthi Liyanage
It is poverty and dreams of greener pastures that motivates many to make this voyage between life and death on secretly chartered seas... Had the heaving multi-day fishing craft donned a different calibre of sea-faring, skipper Ratnapala would have neared a different soil today. His first born, Dinu, as giggly as the foaming surf herself, would have skipped to school with a starry gaze into a rosier future. His wife, Gorati, would not have dissolved herself in tears, distraught over juggling economies to feed and procure school paraphernalia for no less than four offspring. While racing with 85 fugitives on secretly chartered seas to vanish beyond the Lankan territorial border to an ever-receding prosperity shoreline, fate decreed otherwise.
The first panic-monger was the spurting out of the engine. The next was when neither Ratnapala nor the trawler-load he was navigating could figure out how to kick life into it. It is said that the frantic efforts of a technically-skilled young passenger revived the engine to a crawl and they lost their bearings. It is further said that Ratnapala's radio-plea to his land-bound employer was countered with an admonition to grapple deeper seas. Whatever the circumstances, the wild though daring folly was netted by Navy surveillance. The route to liras and euros was cut-off before it had scarcely begun. Rovers launched from Dondra-head two days before, were shored barely 20 miles off Beruwala. They were lucky to be alive. Five others in another craft fleeing in the small hours were not so fortunate when the grossly overfilled trawler capsized minutes after it had left Dondra. Trapped within cargo and engine, drowned in diesel and sea water, no death could have been more horrible. Survivors had fled abandoning another six, sealed-in, men to tell a horrendous tale to the rescuers. A third boat ditched a similar fate by stealthily shedding a part of its human load at Hikkaduwa fishery harbour.
"When the TV announced the capture of a boat with 90 men, people from our area travelled to Galle to see who they are," said Gorati from the fishing suburb of Munnakkaraya, a spoke in the hub of spectacular Negombo fishery harbour. "Through them, I learnt my husband had been there. When I went to see him in remand, I was totally devastated. He hadn't shaved for days and still wore his dirty sea garb." "I am forced to borrow from neighbours to feed my children," cried Gorati while her younger brood, ranging from eleven to seven years, hung to her cloth, giving us curious glances. "The children hang around the house stunned and refuse to eat. It's not food which harrow us but how to get their father released." In the shelter of her unplastered abode, built within a rigmarole of narrow, winding lanes, while her two older sisters assented sympathetically, Gorati told us that Ratnapala worked as a hired skipper for different boats and did not possess his own. "He would be out in sea on fishing trips for days, weeks or months but never beyond the country before. Last Christmas, he could earn only one thousand rupees. He went on this trip because we are poor." "Not only my husband, even the others on that boat had undergone severe hardships. We have to get all of them released," she was resolute. Barely two-year-old Sayuri too needs her father. But she will never see young Sunimal Chaminda Fernando of Wennappuwa again. "They had loaded 170 passengers onto a boat which could carry only 85 as well as supplies to feed them," said Winifrida Fernando, Sunimal's grieving mother. This reckless action by the organizers of the boat which capsized, grabbed from Sunimal not only the 1.5 lakhs of rupees he had paid for the voyage but also his life. "We knew the boat trip was illegal and it was a voyage between life and death, but such over-loading was playing with people's lives," she said. "The survivors should have stayed behind and tried to rescue the trapped ones." Sunimal's father, Antony, said, "Such heartless racketeers must be brought to justice." Behind 26-year-old Sunimal's decision to brave the flight, poverty peers again. An electrician by vocation, he did not earn sufficiently to build a better shelter for his wife and daughter. His parents, working as coir-rope makers, manage only Rs. 150 a day. "In our area, 40 out of 100 families have a family member working in Italy," Sunimal's young brother, 23-year-old Tharanga, a tinker, says. "By domestic chores, such as washing dishes, cleaning toilets and watering garden, they earn more than Rs.30,000 a month." "Going to Italy legally on a visa will cost about Rs. 7 lakhs and will take time. But, a boat trip costs only about Rs.2.5 lakhs and a neighbour already in Italy could sponsor the runaway," Tharanga enlightened us. Just five months back, Sunimal was languishing in Africa for over a year, where the agent he had paid Rs.4.5 lakhs for a job, had stranded him. The family mortgaged their house for Rs.5 lakhs to enable him to fly back home. The mortgage is now overdue and the family struggles with the monthly interest of Rs.25,000. "Sunimal said he was the cause for our downfall and wanted to help us by doing a job in Italy," Winifrida said. With Sunimal's death, they have fallen from the frying pan into the fire. His case could well reflect many others who were ready to fork out a tri-part payment of Rs.2.5 lakhs for the same illicit risk. "He went not because of greed but poverty." A boat owner from Wennappuwa expanded the picture. "One can say there is a scarcity of young men in Kolin Jadiya, Ulhitiyawa and Marawila. Almost 500 are in Italy." Sure enough, an area in Wennappuwa is already called "Little Rome" with opulence in architecture to match it. Work is said to exist in homes, vineyards and restaurants. "The media was wrong in saying that the fishing craft couldn't endure the voyage. They are sturdy enough, equipped with modern technology and usually, experienced fishermen guide them. But some 'Mudalalis' load 150 where 100 can go." Liberal immigration policies in Italy is an inducement, he said. " From Sri Lanka the influx to Italy. From India, Morocco and Pakistan, it is more. Because of the difficulty in finding sufficiently-paid jobs here, these young men risk their lives to go there. Women too have wider opportunity of finding domestic work in Italy. Aren't they contributing to the economy by bringing in foreign exchange?" he questioned. He also pointed out the severe extent of sea-erosion in Kolin Jadiya where a reef is being put up. "How can the fishermen do their vocation? The reef should be constructed effectively so the houses can be saved from being washed to sea." "A perch of land here costs Rs.80,000. Even if you sweat till you die, you cannot earn enough to buy a land and build a house. Can you blame people for running away to Italy?" he asked. This brings us to the humanities of addressing issues concerning the daily struggle of people for a better plane of living as against the drastic measures they have resorted to, battling it, outside the sanctity of law. Negombo Police mentioned instances where trawler-loads of Lankans had fled to Australia and New Zealand. "When boats are captured within Sri Lankan waters, the charge of illegal immigration is rather hard to prove although the large supplies they carry point to it. The Attorney General's advice is sought." Poverty makes people resort to such practices and procedures need to be formulated for hazardless emigration, Police added. Besides detection, the sociological causes for such digressions are well worth looking into. |
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