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| Sunday, 29 December 2002 |
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Cashing in on foreign aid A critical analysis by Kalyananda Tiranagama Let us examine the Project Cost estimates in the MOU for the Water Resources Management Project. This project is expected to finance: (a) Institutional development costs for the establishment of National Water Resources Authority. Data and Information Strengthening and Water Resource Management Training; (b) Infrastructure for Water Resource Management by the construction of Kelani Conservation Barrage and Low-Flow weirs. The total cost of the Project is estimated at US$ 28.0 million out of which the foreign exchange cost is estimated at $16.1 million and the local currency costs at $11.9 million. The government of Sri Lanka requested the ADB to provide a loan of $19.6 million to finance about 70 percent of the total cost of the Project. The allocation made for each foreign consultant, working on a short term basis, for a month is $ 30,000 = Rs. 2,820,000. There are 9 short term foreign consultants who will work altogether for 27 months at this rate. The allocation made for each foreign consultant, working on long term basis, for a month is $22,700 = Rs. 2,133,800 (over Rs, 2 million per month). There are 7 long term foreign consultants who will work altogether for 69 months at this rate. The total amount spent for these foreign consultants is $ 2,633,700. This will amount to Rs. 247,567,800 in local currency, (Rs. 247.6 million for the foreign consultants alone). The allocations made for local employees vary from $ 3600 - $ 5000 per month, i.e. Rs. 338,400 - Rs. 470,000. An allocation is made for a Project Coordinator at the rate of Rs. 470,000 per month for 5 years, i.e. 60 months. There are two persons - a Training specialist and a Policy Support Specialist - for each of whom an allocation of $ 3600 (Rs. 338,400) per month is made for 36 months. Allocation is made for a Finance and Administration Specialist at the rate of $ 4000 (Rs. 376,000) per month for 24 months. There are 4 other short term local specialists for whom allocation is made at the rate of $ 4000 per month for 14 months altogether. (Exchange rate US$ 1 =Rs. 94). This is how allocations are made for international and local consultants / specialists in the Project: A1. Establishment of Nwra and partner agencies We need not make any comments on the skills and expertise of these foreign consultants. Our forefathers who lived over 2000 years, without any modern technology, equipment or foreign training, built an excellent system of irrigation which is not second. If not superior, to any other irrigation system in the world. Over 2000 years ago during the reign of King Dhatusena, they built Jaya Ganga, the canal that carries water from Kalawewa to Anuradhapura a distance of 20 miles, which had a gradient for the first 17 miles of only six inches per mile. Even modern day foreign hydraulic engineers are astonished at the engineering skills of our ancient people. 'Such being the care, the Sinhalese Engineers by building these Biso-kotuwas established a claim to be considered as 'the first inventors of the 'valve-pit' more than 2100 years ago. "It must have been no easy task to control the outflow of the water at reservoirs, which had depth of thirty or forty feet, as was the case at several large work. Yet the similarity of the design of the Bisokotuwas at all periods proves that the engineers of the third century B.C. if not those of an earlier period, had mastered the problem so successfully that all others were satisfied to copy their design". Whatever form the design took it was a triumph of the ingenuity of the ancient Sinhalese engineers and the more surprising when we find the earliest sluices furnished with it. It was this invention alone which permitted the Sinhalese to proceed boldly with the construction of reservoirs that still rank among the finest and greatest work of the kind in the world. Ancient Ceylon, Parker. Another aspect of the system adopted to control the water in a tank presents us with an equally astonishing fact. It is undoubtedly remarkable to find it recorded that the art of raising water by machinery was practiced in Ceylon at least as early as B.C. 19. 'Yet another branch of engineering which had unquestionably attained a very high pitch of perfection at the hands of the ancient Sinhalese was that which held within its scope a knowledge of surveying and levelling'. 'It has advanced on the evidence of tradition and fragments of age-old inscriptions, that an organization which functioned much on the lines of our modern service for survey existed from earliest times of the Christian era if not even before. - Hindu Administration in South India - Survey and Settlement, Dr. Iyenger. Courtesy: "people's Right's" - Lawyers for Human Rights and Development publication |
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